Let’s be honest: Getting MongoDB up and running quickly in the cloud sounds fantastic. Services like MongoDB Atlas promise easy deployment, automated scaling, and hands-off management on AWS, Azure, and GCP. For teams looking to shed operational burdens, the appeal is tempting. Click a few buttons, get a database… what’s not to like?
However, as many teams have discovered, initial convenience can come with strings attached. Hidden costs, architectural limitations, and the creeping grasp of vendor lock-in often surface after you’re already heavily invested. You might find yourself trading long-term flexibility and control for short-term ease.
If you’re feeling squeezed by your managed MongoDB service or just exploring options, stick around. We’ll look at the real trade-offs involved and introduce an enterprise-ready, freely available alternative that keeps you in the driver’s seat.
Understanding the MongoDB Atlas proposition
To have a fair discussion, let’s first acknowledge what MongoDB Atlas does provide. It’s a fully managed Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) designed to simplify running MongoDB.
What it delivers:
- Managed service: Handles provisioning, patching, and basic setup across major cloud providers.
- Automated operations: Takes care of standard tasks like backups and scaling, and provides built-in monitoring dashboards.
- Integrated ecosystem: Offers access to a suite of proprietary Atlas-specific features to create a unified development experience.
- Support and security tiers: Provides various support plans and security features.
The core promise? Get started fast and let MongoDB Inc. handle the backend operations.
The hidden costs: What you trade for Atlas convenience
That convenience, however, comes at a price… and not just the one on the invoice.
Here’s what you might be giving up:
Cost uncertainty and escalation
Your bill isn’t just about compute and storage. Expect line items for data transfer, backup storage, IOPs, and premium features like Atlas Search nodes or advanced support. This usage-based model, especially for data transfer and features, can make MongoDB cloud pricing unpredictable and surprisingly high as you scale.
Vendor lock-in
This is a big one. When you build applications relying on Atlas-specific APIs and features, migrating away becomes a significant engineering challenge. You’re not just moving data; you might need to rewrite core application logic. This creates substantial MongoDB cloud lock-in, limiting your future choices.
Limited portability and architectural constraints
Need flexibility? Atlas can feel restrictive. While you can choose your primary cloud provider, moving your MongoDB workload between these clouds, or migrating your data and applications off the Atlas service entirely back to your own on-premises servers, is often much harder than if you were already self-managing.
So why, exactly, is migrating away from Atlas complicated? If your applications rely heavily on Atlas-specific features, those proprietary tools don’t exist outside the Atlas environment. Moving off Atlas means you’d need to find alternatives or rewrite significant parts of your application logic, which is a major undertaking.
However, even if you do stay within their ecosystem, you have less direct control over the specific underlying virtual machine types, storage options, and network configurations compared to running MongoDB yourself on cloud infrastructure or Kubernetes. Want the freedom to easily shift MongoDB between AWS and GCP, optimize your specific hardware, or have a clear path back to on-prem if needed? Atlas’s architecture and reliance on its unique feature set can make those strategic moves much more complex and costly.
See how easy it is to migrate to Percona for MongoDB
Restricted control and customization
Need to apply specific OS-level tunings for peak performance? Want fine-grained control over security configurations beyond Atlas’s offerings? Or need to deploy a specific MongoDB patch version ASAP? With a managed service like Atlas, you often lose that deep-level control. You operate within the boundaries set by the provider.
Single-vendor risk
Your entire MongoDB operation (features, roadmap, pricing structure, and operational policies) is controlled by one company: MongoDB, Inc. Changes they make directly impact your setup and budget, whether you like them or not.
Common MongoDB cloud pain points we hear from teams
Does any of this sound familiar? We often hear from teams facing these exact issues:
If you’re nodding along, know that you’re not alone, and there is an alternative.
The Alternative: Enterprise-grade MongoDB without the constraints
Okay, so you’ve seen the potential downsides of Atlas: the unpredictable costs, the creeping lock-in, and the limits on control. If you’re looking for a way to run MongoDB that gives you back flexibility, helps you control costs, and eliminates vendor lock-in, without sacrificing enterprise capabilities, that’s exactly where Percona fits in.
Percona provides the open source or source-available software, tools, and expertise to run MongoDB effectively on your terms, wherever you need it. We help you build a production-ready MongoDB environment free from restrictive licenses and proprietary APIs.
Key components of Percona for MongoDB:
- Percona Server for MongoDB: A 100% compatible, drop-in replacement for MongoDB Community Edition, but with more. You get performance and operational enhancements plus enterprise-grade features (like enhanced auditing, data-at-rest encryption options, and LDAP authentication) available entirely for free, without needing a commercial license.
- Percona Backup for MongoDB: Backups you can trust. This open source backup tool handles replica sets and sharded clusters, supports point-in-time recovery, and works with your storage of choice. Flexible, reliable, and built for real-world needs.
- Percona Operator for MongoDB: Running on Kubernetes? The Operator makes it easy. Automate deployment, scaling, backups, and cluster management across any cloud or on-prem environment. Like a managed service, only it’s yours.
- Percona Monitoring and Management (PMM): Serious observability, zero license fees. While not included directly in the Percona for MongoDB stack, PMM gives you deep insights into your database performance, from system metrics to query-level analysis. It’s open source and works across your entire database environment, not just in MongoDB.
- Expert support, when you want it: Use Percona for MongoDB without a support contract, or add one when you need extra confidence. We’re here 24/7 to help with architecture, performance tuning, migrations, and production issues.
Achieving true MongoDB cloud agility with Percona
Using Percona for MongoDB fundamentally changes your cloud strategy, putting you back in control.
- Run anywhere, consistently: Deploy the exact same Percona for MongoDB stack, managed via the Percona Operator, on AWS, GCP, Azure, private cloud, or on-prem. One consistent setup, everywhere. Hybrid and multi-cloud? No problem.
- Full infrastructure control: You choose the precise virtual machine instances, the storage performance characteristics (balancing cost and IOPS), and the network topology that best suits your application and budget. Apply your specific security hardening and compliance policies directly at the infrastructure level.
- Transparent and predictable costs: Your primary costs become the underlying cloud infrastructure (compute, storage, network) that you directly control and can optimize, plus optional Percona support or managed services if you choose them. This is vastly different from Atlas’s layered pricing for features, data transfer, and support tiers.
- Open ecosystem integration: Percona tools integrate smoothly with your existing observability stack (like Prometheus and Grafana), while PMM provides best-in-class database-specific insights.
- Escape the lock-in: Because you’re using open source and source-available tools and standard MongoDB protocols, your architecture and data remain portable. You’re not building dependencies on proprietary APIs that trap you in one vendor’s ecosystem.
Choose control, choose flexibility, choose Percona
MongoDB Atlas clearly offers a convenient on-ramp to using MongoDB in the cloud. But that convenience often involves trading away long-term control, accepting unpredictable costs, and risking significant vendor lock-in.
If you’re hitting the limitations of Atlas, or simply want to build a more flexible, cost-effective, and future-proof MongoDB cloud strategy, there’s a better path.
Don’t let initial ease lead to long-term constraints. Take back control of your MongoDB. Use our MongoDB pricing calculator to get a clearer view of what your cloud deployment could cost with more flexibility and fewer limitations, and if you’re not sure if MongoDB, Inc. is still the right fit, here’s what to consider:
7 Reasons to Switch from MongoDB to Percona for MongoDB
