Do you guys see mongoDB usage going up or down? I’ve been trying to think of some good ways to gauge the trend. It seems to be pretty flat if you gauge it via npm downloads of the mongodb package.
I really wouldn’t worry abut how many people are downloading the package. If mongo is the right tool for you then great. If it’s not, don’t use it
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Curious about the stock 
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Looking at npm downloads of the MongoDB package is only going to tell you about the usage of MongoDB for node.js applications. MongoDB has much bigger ecosystem than that. Not to mention there is a big company with a lot of money behind it. These statistics are misleading as there are many variables that they don’t account for.
Given that there are conferences and other events like webinars going on constantly I think the trend is positive, even if the hype stage has been passed.
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The only major downward pressure I see would come from clones like DocumentDB (or whatever Amazon’s recent clone is called). I’m not sure if they’ve come up with a strategy to combat that. If you can just download a driver that has the same syntax as mongoDB, but uses DocumentDB behind it, I don’t think many devs/companies would care what’s behind the curtain.
MongoDB hasn’t been emphasizing downloads of the DB for the last couple of years. The focus has been on enterprise sales, Atlas deployments, and other cloud implementations. FWIW, MongoDB is still the most popular NoSQL DB in the wild. If you’re checking trends, see https://db-engines.com/en/ranking because this is what the management team at MDB focuses on. In addition to its fifth place rank overall (behind the leading SQL dbs), notice the M/M and Y/Y growth numbers. Only MySQL and Postgres had higher Y/Y growth rates and MongoDB’s 51.27% rise blows all the other document databases out of the water.
Past community downloads have been a bit of a public relations headache for MDB. Early on, security was turned off by default on mongodb instances; you would have to configure security yourself. However, many people built software on these deployments without ever enabling proper security.Over the last three years, tens of thousands of these instances have been hacked, data stolen or worse - destroyed. With Atlas, MongoDB is in a better position to ensure the security of their customers’ databases because configuration is managed and audited by its own ops and security teams.
DocumentDB barely registers, and let’s be clear: MongoDB is one of Amazon’s largest customers. The more Atlas is sold, the more money Amazon makes. Same for Azure. Same for GCP. Atlas runs there too.
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Downloads are a useful proxy but they’re a vanity metric if MongoDB doesn’t know how to make money. The revenue team at MongoDB knows how. It’s no longer just the open source database. It’s an entire ecosystem that includes analytics (Compass), serverless (Stitch), and managed services (Atlas, Ops Manager), and consulting. They’re reducing losses, increasing revenues through new wins, and growing existing customer sales. All the right moves.
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Just waiting for them to buy MDG so they can run the full stack including the graphql analytics
I don’t think that is going to happen. The goals of the companies are different.
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