MongoLab is probably the next most popular Mongo service on these forums. Funny thing is I’ve had much better luck with Compose.io (including their support) than any other service.
I have used MongoLab in production on multiple Meteor projects and have never experience any problems with it.
One difference you should be aware of is that the lower level service tiers do not employ oplog. You need to use a replica set tier to get the Meteor oplog integration working and benefit from that efficiency.
I agree with @goatic, Compose.io has been extremely reliable for me.
Support response times are excellent as well. During a particularly demanding week for one of my apps I opened a ticket to increase resources and received a response 7 minutes later, resources bumped 5 minutes after that.
I’ve been using Compose.io for several months. For whatever reason, I reliably have to restart meteor every morning, because it’s not reconnecting. To me, that’s unreliable to lose the db and not have it reconnect.
When I contacted support, I got the run-around on it. Compose.io felt like an enterprise service organization. “The less-good news is that standard Compose support does not extend to the application layer.”
After several brush-offs, I may have gotten to a 2nd level support person. See the linked issue.
It’s a big ask for $18/mo, but after working with it for several months, it’s not reliable enough to go live with. Compose.io does not seem like a partner in figuring it out. MDG said they’re working on it.
When I contacted support, I got the run-around on it. Compose.io felt like an enterprise service organization. “The less-good news is that standard Compose support does not extend to the application layer.”
I wouldn’t expect a database provider to help you debug your app. It’s doubtful that the issue is with compose.io. It is probably an issue with your app or your deployment scheme.
Sounds to me like your application is unreliable I don’t mean to be rude, but you must have trouble with your configuration, not compose. Try connect a plain app to the db, and see if the problem persists for that as well
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Annnd this is why I use Modulus (and soon Galaxy), so I don’t have to deal with these type of garbage issues.
Snark
Why is your database in a separate datacenter from your app? Seems like you’re adding unnecessary latency for the user, no? Also, are you using the compose.io MongoDB+ beta with SSL? If not, isn’t your app sending unencrypted data over the open internet (since your app and DB are not in the same datacenter)?
@michaelcole are you using the free sandbox database or the production replica set? I’ve been using the latter and have not had any issues, one app as been up for several months without any errors (on 1.1 it think).
@michaelcole you should take a look at these resources:
There is a fair chance the issue is with a malformed MONGO_URL and not Compose. In particular be sure to Always use resolvable hostnames for the value of the host field in the replica set configuration.
I encountered a similar issue many months back where a production app would connect but fail to reconnect. Updated a malformed syntax and it hasn’t dropped since. Compose has been very reliable in my experience.
My experience with Compose is pretty great. We had some issues, but they helped us.
May be you need to move your DataCenter to Digital Ocean. If it’s still on Digital Ocean, may that’s the issue. If then, try to move it to AWS. (Our DBs are on AWS)
Did you read the github issue? There is a DB connection issue that may be related to connection pools and timeouts. Azure platform also had firewall issues for other MongoDB connections.
Datacenters: Compose.io says it has a presence in the DO NY2 datacenter. Encrypted data: Mitigated by same data center, but a valid concern and doesn’t appear to be offered/configured. Plan: paid Connection Strings: They’re fine and resolvable. Those issues are important but unrelated.
I’m moving to local MongoDB hosting next iteration.
I tried Compose.io only after IBM bought it and it was a very painful experience. I had Mongo and Elastic Search instances and, for no obvious reason, I got random downtime under a megabyte of data.
Since I move to MongoLab I never had a single problem with it both with the cluster and pay per gigabyte account type. For Elastic I’m using Found.no and I never had issues with it.
I don’t mean to be rude, but you must have trouble with your configuration, not compose. Try connect a plain app to the db, and see if the problem persists for that as well