We compared Amazon DynamoDB and Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB based on our user's reviews across parameters. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Amazon DynamoDB and Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, while both providing robust cloud database solutions, exhibit distinct features tailored to diverse user needs. DynamoDB, embedded within the AWS ecosystem, excels in managed scalability, security, and high availability but faces criticism over cost predictability and the steep learning curve for new users. Azure Cosmos DB stands out with its multi-model support and global distribution, offering flexibility and performance optimization across geographically dispersed areas. However, it also presents challenges with its complex pricing structure and steep learning curve. Both platforms indicate potential areas for improvement in cost transparency and user-friendly documentation, but they also maintain solid reputations for enhancing data management through their respective unique strengths.
The summary above is based on 53 interviews we conducted recently with Amazon DynamoDB and Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the non-relational database."
"The most valuable features are the flexibility and the compatibility options without needing to use any additional services or software. It is an independent solution that doesn't need other solutions to operate."
"It has helped us build our product from zero point to the end."
"We directly pass the JSON value to Amazon DynamoDB, which is why Amazon DynamoDB is faster than relational databases."
"Speed is the most valuable feature. The speed to store and retrieve data from it."
"DynamoDB is a key-value database, and it's valuable if you have simple scan queries and don't need to do point searches."
"The best feature of the solution is that it is a NoSQL database."
"Amazon DynamoDB is powerful and fast. Its performance is good."
"With Azure you can start small and grow as you need."
"It works reasonably fast. You can retain the original format of the document as received by the third-party system."
"It's not a specific feature that I value, but the scalability of this system is the most impressive aspect."
"The solution's read capacity and write access functions are very fast so users don't have to wait when fetching or displaying data on a screen."
"The best feature is the velocity to make a query."
"Cosmos DB is a pretty stable solution. I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"rate Azure support nine out of 10. They respond quickly and will help you manage costs. However, they mainly give you an overview of the issue, so they'll never have an in-depth idea of what you're doing. They aren't the owners of our product, so they don't know much about it, but they can ask you generally: What are you doing? Are you doing too many updates? How can we reduce the cost?"
"It is one of the simpler databases to work with in terms of code management, tracking, and debugging due to its straightforward data storage and retrieval mechanisms."
"Having an import option, whether through browsing or local file uploads, would significantly improve the efficiency of data migration, enabling users to swiftly transfer large volumes of data into DynamoDB."
"The response time for data queries should be less than a second"
"Currently, there is no option for a scheduled refresh in this solution. We want the data to be populated into DynamoDB on a timely basis. Currently, you have to go to the DynamoDB table and hit the refresh button to populate it with the new data. If you have connected DynamoDB to a BI application for creating visualizations with charts, graphs, or other things, you would want it to get updated as per the schedule so that you have updated visualizations in your BI application."
"The design patterns and the documentation for this solution could be improved. In a future release, we would like to see an improvement of the data push options as we sometimes experience blockers when moving data."
"I'd like to see better integration with Cognito. It has the integration, but I'd like to see a little more ease of setup. If you have multiple customers and you want the database to enforce who can see what, you can treat DynamoDB so that each row has permissions. You can set this up, but it's a little more of a science project to make Cognito and DynamoDB work well to do protection of individual rows. So I'd like that to be more wizard or easy to set up."
"In future releases, I would like a feature that lets us store information about public holidays or weekends. When customers call during those closed periods, we could use DynamoDB to trigger an automatic message. So this would eliminate the need for agents to manually inform customers."
"The solution's interface is the biggest challenge because if you want to access DynamoDB, you need an AWS account."
"There are some issues like if we missed something or somehow were not able to store the data, then it was quite difficult for us to get back that data."
"It should offer a simple user interface for querying Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB."
"It's still new, and good training resources are harder to find. Even the most recent books on Cosmos DB are several years old, which is ancient in IT terms."
"The support tickets are not cheap."
"There is room for improvement in terms of stability."
"The query is a little complex. SQL server should have more options. But the query should be better."
"At this stage, we would like more enterprise support. We use MongoDB a lot, and we're trying to get rid of MongoDB. So, I would like to see more features in the Cosmos DB API for MongoDB space."
"The solution cannot join two databases like Oracle or SQL Server."
"The integration of the on-premise solution with the cloud can be difficult sometimes."
Amazon DynamoDB is ranked 2nd in Managed NoSQL Databases with 31 reviews while Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is ranked 1st in Managed NoSQL Databases with 38 reviews. Amazon DynamoDB is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Amazon DynamoDB writes "Manages our contact center dynamically and allows us to store multiple data attributes in tables". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB writes "Removes bottlenecks related to databases in our application and works quickly because of reference keys". Amazon DynamoDB is most compared with Amazon DocumentDB, Google Cloud Bigtable, Amazon Neptune, Amazon Timestream and Oracle NoSQL Database Cloud, whereas Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is most compared with Amazon Neptune, Neo4j AuraDB, Google Cloud Bigtable, Amazon DocumentDB and Amazon Timestream. See our Amazon DynamoDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB report.
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