Shift8 Creative Graphic Design and Website Development

So I'm growing tired of configuring servers. I simply don't have the time...Between designing sites/apps and then actually coding them on top of all sorts of project management, dealing with clients, getting paid, etc. There's just no time with all the projects I work on. So I'm looking more and more toward various PaaS solutions (platform as a service). I've been looking at RedHat's solution as well as VMWare's CloudFoundry and Orchestra.io as well. Only Orchestra has support for PHP currently (aside from RedHat's service) as well as support for MongoDB with PHP. I'm sure I'll have a comparison/review/my two cents for those services later.

However, today I'm going to talk about two hosted MongoDB solutions that I've come across. When I was at the MongoSV conference the other year I met some of the vendors there and MongoHQ really stuck in my head. There was also another company there, Mongo Machine. They go about their pricing differently. Mongo Machine is more cost up front so I haven't tried it to be honest. I'm not sure I will either. If I'm at the point of putting in that much money, then I'm going to just host my own database on my own servers. 

A side note. Hosting your own MongoDB (single or cluster) is going to likely yield better performance, especially with your cost/performance ratio. Plus you gain control over what your server setup is like. So there's two reasons why I'd suggest one of these services. First, it's amazingly simple to setup and manage and you don't need to worry about scaling. So convenience is number one. The second reason is more of a scenario. When you don't need super performance because your traffic isn't as high or maybe you're not doing anything as intensive (lots of map/reduces, etc.), it's probably a very good idea to use one of these services. Think about your own personal website. It's likely that you can have a free database solution for your own blog or something. Pretty cool!

Back on point. I've signed up for and have created two databases on MongoHQ and also MongoLab. MongoLab either was not at the MongoSV 2010 conference or I didn't see them...But I like them. So I'm going to compare these two services because they are extremely similar in pricing models, interface, and everything. 

Getting Started
It took all of 5 minutes to setup both services. MongoHQ I had to enter a credit card number, MongoLab I did not.

Configuration
I'm going to talk about Lithium here since that's what I use for a PHP framework (and you should probably too, if I can be an advocate for a few seconds here). Setting up Lithium to use MongoDB on MongoHQ and MongoLab was easy...Once you know what your config array should look like and also once you realize that you have to set the default timeout from 100ms to something higher, like a few seconds. The port number has to be in the host key value. The login key has to be set as well as the password key. This process was identical for both services.

However... Here's an interesting difference. MongoLab has several options when it comes to "where" you're hosting your database(s). You can choose to use Amazon EC2, Rackspace Cloud, or Joyent. This is a major point to MongoLab over MongoHQ. The reason is because one of my gripes is with performance. This is mainly due to hostname lookups and such. If you so happen to be using Rackspace for your hosting (again, I'm going to be a fan for them) you can use the private IP that's within their network! This should (I haven't tried it because I'm on Slicehost and have yet to move my server) help with the timeout setting that you just had to increase in your configuration. I imagine the same goes for Joyent and Amazon EC2 when choosing those locations for your database as well.

MongoHQ uses Amazon EC2 exclusively and you do not get to choose. I'm not sure which region or how it's setup, but I imagine if you also use Amazon EC2, you may get a performance bump when using MongoHQ when it comes to connecting to the database.

Pricing
The pricing models are the same. They both offer a free tier, but, what you get for what you pay is much different between the two. Not incredibly different...Except for when it comes to the free tier. You can likely run an entire blog/personal web site off MongoLab for free because they give you 240MB for free while MongoHQ gives you 16MB for free. Both then have similar plans, but not identical. You're talking about $5/mo differences here and there depending on which tier you fall into between the two services. Nothing to worry about.

It's only when you get into needing replication that things start to get different. MongoLab gives you replication on their plans that cost money. MongoHQ has it available, but you have to pay $300/mo to get it. MongoLab you get it even with their $10/mo plan.

Both have backups, that's cool. Both seem to be monitored, etc. What I'm not sure about is if MongoLab has you on a dedicated instance. MongoHQ lets you know that you are when you hit the mid range to higher end plans. The only thing MongoLab has is their dedicated plan which has a variable cost and I imagine you'd need to get in touch with them to price that.

So I'm not sure what that all means, but it could definitely affect performance. Maybe MongoLab can shed some light on that...Or maybe bcause MongoLab has it all replicated, the dedicated instance per account isn't as important because they are scaling with MongoDB's features.

I have to say neither wins the pricing category. They are comparable, but if I had to choose...I'd say MongoLab because their free tier is better.

Features
I have to say that I think MongoLab is going to have better features here. 

Update: Anyone who previously read this section would have seen info about how MongoLab offers replication. Which it does, but I have been informed it is not replica-sets. Meaning the failover is not automatic. Replica-sets are offered on their higher tier plan. This is more consistent with MongoHQ. Not knowing much about the internals of both services, I can't say if one is better than the other when it comes to scaling.

Here's another important note. MongoHQ seems to be running on an old version of MonogDB depending on which pricing plan you choose. You could be on 1.6.x or you could be on 1.8.x. 1.6.x is a bit old considering 2.0 is now out. MongoLab uses 1.8.x for everything. The "micro" instance on MongoHQ runs a 32-bit instance of MongoDB where the rest are 64-bit. MongoLab appears to use 64-bit for everything, but I could be wrong. They don't explicitly state that anywhere. Do you "need" 64-bit? No, not for 16MB or 240MB of storage.

Both services have a nice interface for browsing and even editing documents in your database. I love both. They have import/export features and it's everything you'd want. I don't think either service is better than the other when it comes to your database browser. MongoLab has the whole dark theme thing going while MongoHQ has a light design...If that matters to you. The important thing to note here is that MongoHQ allows you to hook up any database to their GUI. You can't do that with MongoLab. It's minor, but a cool feature.

Both services also have a REST API. This is neat for mobile apps, etc. Situations where you don't have acccess to a MongoDB driver...Which I think is pretty rare, but you never know. However, what MongoLab's API doesn't seem to do (which I wish it did) is allow you to deploy new databases. Being able to setup new databases via an API might make for a very nice solution when it comes to certain applications. For example, you may wish to create a service where every user who signs up pays you and each of those users gets their own database for security reasons and also so you can track their usage so you can in turn, charge them money to recover your hosting costs. Automation on that, would be great. MongoHQ appears to let you do that with their API.

Both services show you your database stats as well. I think MongoLab presents them with a little more helpful info which is good if you're new to MongoDB. MongoLab allows you to profile things as well whereas MongoHQ doesn't have anything like that built into their GUI. I imagine you could code your own profiling tools within your app though.

Overages
There's "soft" limits or overages that you can run into with both services. They both seem to be fair with this, but you need to be on top of your databases and if you are moving out of one tier, you need to switch your plan to the next tier. However, it's important to note that MongoHQ only has a soft limit on their high end plan. This means your database will not accept any more writes until you upgrade. I can only imagine for (just) the free plan on MongoLab the same is true. Given that you don't need to enter a credit card, I'm not sure how they would allow you to just keep using more and more. You get charged overages with the other tiers until you can switch plans. 

Nothing to really worry about with both services, but I think MongoLab handles things a little bit more nicely in case you're one of those people who don't really pay attention to your database and how it may be growing in size.

Reliability/Performance
This is something I can't speak about. I haven't used either service long enough to know. It can be completely possible that MongoHQ performs better and is more reliable than MongoLab. That would ultimately be the deciding factor for me to use MongoHQ over MongoLab, despite the pricing and features. It's simply more important than a database stays up.

My Choice
Both are very comparable services and are great. The differences between the two are minor and unless you're familiar with MongoDB, you likely won't really know what the differences are. You may not even care.

I personally will continue to play with both services since they have a free tier, but I am leaning toward MongoLab. I think they are definitely a service to follow and use. If you have a personal site that you want to use MongoDB, then I'd suggest trying one of these services. If you're on shared hosting, you likely need to use one of these services in order to use MongoDB. 

I think they also currently have the edge due to four reasons -- listed in order of what's most important to me.
#1 Choice of EC2, Rackspace, or Joyent with private IPs for (hopefully) better performance
#2 Replication
#3 Their free tier gives you more storage space
#4 Version 1.8.x of MongoDB