Is your organization’s innovation being constrained by proprietary software restrictions? You’re not alone—these limitations are increasingly at odds with enterprise growth objectives, affecting both bottom lines and competitive agility.
For years, proprietary software has dominated the enterprise database space, with MongoDB emerging as one of the most well-known players. Its powerful combination of scalability, flexibility, and developer-friendly features catapulted it to widespread adoption across diverse industries.
However, organizations are now critically reassessing their dependence on proprietary solutions like MongoDB. Restrictive licensing terms, escalating costs, and constraints on deployment flexibility are driving businesses toward alternatives that promise greater freedom, control, and cost-effectiveness.
This shift isn’t just about saving money—it signals a strategic move to reclaim infrastructure autonomy, ensure compliance across complex environments, and mitigate the substantial risks of vendor lock-in. In this blog, we’ll take a look at the fundamental challenges posed by proprietary software (with MongoDB as our case study) and explore why forward-thinking businesses are embracing more open, adaptable solutions to secure their technological future.
Understanding MongoDB’s position
MongoDB has long been a favorite thanks to its NoSQL architecture, ease of use, and adaptability. Initially, its open source roots gave it widespread appeal among developers seeking a flexible database solution that could scale as applications grew.
The shift to SSPL licensing
In 2018, MongoDB’s licensing strategy evolved dramatically. Its transition from the AGPL (Affero General Public License) to the SSPL (Server Side Public License) marked a significant shift, sparking debate in the open source community. Unlike traditional open source licenses, the SSPL requires service providers that offer MongoDB as a service to either release their entire stack as open source or purchase a commercial license—creating restrictions that particularly impact cloud service providers.
The challenges for enterprises
This licensing change has created tangible challenges for enterprises that rely on MongoDB for critical operations. For example, organizations with multi-cloud strategies can now face complex compliance issues when deploying MongoDB across different environments. While the database remains a strong option for cloud-first use cases, its licensing restrictions and focus on managed cloud services like Atlas often leave customers with fewer options for on-premises or hybrid deployments.
Reassessing MongoDB’s role
For many businesses, questions about flexibility, cost transparency, and legal simplicity are prompting a closer look at MongoDB’s place in their database strategy. As challenges with proprietary platforms become more apparent, organizations are rethinking their reliance on MongoDB and seeking alternatives that better align with their evolving needs.
Now, let’s explore the key drivers behind this shift and why so many companies are choosing a different path.
Reasons businesses are moving away from MongoDB
Licensing and legal concerns
MongoDB’s adoption of the SSPL (Server Side Public License) has raised significant challenges for enterprises and cloud service providers.
The SSPL license requires that anyone offering MongoDB as a service must open source their entire service stack, which is impractical for most businesses and cloud providers. This requirement extends far beyond the database itself to potentially include proprietary software components that companies have developed as competitive advantages.
Unlike open source licenses recognized by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the SSPL imposes unique restrictions that make it difficult for organizations to use MongoDB in cloud-hosted services or as part of SaaS offerings.
For businesses aiming to innovate without being constrained by licensing terms, this creates uncertainty and compliance risks that are difficult to navigate. Consider a mid-sized software company that wants to include MongoDB as part of its customer-facing application: under SSPL, determining whether their specific implementation triggers the “service” clause can require costly legal analysis.
Additionally, SSPL’s proprietary nature introduces legal ambiguities, forcing organizations to evaluate whether their use of MongoDB might inadvertently violate licensing terms. For procurement and legal teams, this translates to added due diligence, potential costs, and risks that some businesses find unmanageable.
Cost implications
MongoDB’s commercial offerings, particularly Enterprise Advanced and Atlas, have become increasingly expensive. Licensing fees, scaling costs, and charges for essential features like backups and data transfers contribute to a rising total cost of ownership (TCO). For businesses under pressure to optimize IT budgets, these unpredictable expenses can make MongoDB a less attractive choice compared to more cost-stable alternatives.
Hidden fees for scaling workloads or accessing advanced functionality further complicate financial planning. For example, when data requirements grow, the per-gigabyte pricing model can lead to sudden budget overruns, forcing difficult conversations between technical teams and finance departments. As economic uncertainty prompts organizations to seek cost-effective solutions, many are turning to alternatives that provide enterprise-grade capabilities without the financial burden or unpredictable cost escalations.
Vendor lock-in and lack of flexibility
A key concern for businesses is the difficulty of migrating away from MongoDB’s proprietary features. Atlas, MongoDB’s managed cloud service, integrates deeply into their ecosystem, making transitions to other platforms more challenging and costly. Organizations that have heavily invested in MongoDB-specific query syntax and data modeling find themselves tightly coupled to a single vendor’s technology decisions.
This dependency on MongoDB’s roadmap limits flexibility and forces organizations to make decisions that may not align with their long-term goals. For instance, if your business strategy requires expanding into regions where Atlas has a limited presence, you may face difficult tradeoffs between performance and maintaining a consistent database platform.
As businesses increasingly prioritize database-agnostic solutions, the demand for platforms that allow seamless migrations and hybrid or multi-cloud deployments continues to grow. With edge computing and distributed architectures becoming standard requirements, organizations need the freedom to choose the infrastructure that best fits their requirements rather than being locked into a single vendor’s offerings.
Limitations of managed cloud services
MongoDB Atlas, while powerful in the cloud, presents hurdles for businesses requiring on-premises or hybrid solutions. Its cloud-first approach leaves limited options for organizations operating in industries with strict compliance and data sovereignty regulations, such as finance, healthcare, and government. For example, companies subject to GDPR or HIPAA compliance often find Atlas’s data residency options insufficient for their specific regulatory requirements.
For these businesses, the inability to fully control their database infrastructure introduces compliance risks and operational challenges. A healthcare provider, for instance, may need to keep patient data on-premises while leveraging cloud resources for analytics workloads—a scenario poorly supported by Atlas’s architecture. Hybrid models that combine on-premises and cloud deployments are often essential for meeting both regulatory demands and business objectives, yet Atlas offers limited support for such setups, lacking seamless data synchronization between environments and consistent management interfaces across deployment models.
Community and support concerns
As MongoDB shifts its focus toward commercial offerings, some in the community have raised concerns about reduced emphasis on open collaboration and innovation. This shift is evident in how MongoDB now reserves many of its most significant improvements for its paid products rather than the community version. Enterprises that rely on strong community support and third-party expertise to manage their databases may find MongoDB’s ecosystem increasingly dependent on MongoDB, Inc. for assistance.
This reliance creates challenges for businesses that need affordable, reliable support outside of proprietary channels. For example, organizations facing complex performance issues or needing custom integrations often discover that comprehensive troubleshooting documentation and expert guidance are primarily available through expensive enterprise support contracts. With limited alternatives, organizations may struggle to find the guidance they need to manage, scale, or troubleshoot their databases effectively, potentially leading to extended downtimes and higher operational costs.
Advantages of moving away from proprietary solutions like MongoDB
Freedom from vendor lock-in
Breaking free from vendor lock-in offers unparalleled flexibility for businesses. By moving away from proprietary solutions, organizations gain the ability to operate seamlessly in multi-cloud or hybrid environments, adapting to their unique needs without being tied to a specific vendor’s ecosystem. This flexibility allows companies to leverage the best features of different cloud providers—using AWS for its computing power, Google Cloud for its AI capabilities, or Azure for its enterprise integration—all while maintaining a consistent database layer.
Full control over infrastructure empowers businesses to make decisions based on their goals rather than a vendor’s roadmap, eliminating restrictions that can stifle innovation and growth.
Cost savings
Proprietary platforms often come with hefty licensing fees and hidden costs—such as charges for scaling, feature access, and support—making long-term budgeting a challenge. By adopting alternative solutions, organizations can reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) significantly, with many companies reporting major savings on database-related expenses after migration.
Without licensing fees or forced upgrades, businesses can enjoy predictable costs and allocate resources more effectively. Cloud resource optimization becomes simpler when you’re not constrained by proprietary licensing models that charge premiums for additional instances or data volume. This financial freedom allows organizations to invest in other critical areas that drive growth and innovation, such as application development, data science initiatives, or improved customer experiences.
Customization and control
Proprietary software often limits customization, leaving businesses stuck with features that may not align with their needs. For example, many organizations need specialized encryption or authentication methods that proprietary databases support only through expensive add-ons, if at all. Moving away from these constraints allows organizations to tailor their database infrastructure to meet specific security, performance, and compliance requirements.
Whether deploying on-premises or in private clouds, businesses retain full ownership of their environments, enabling them to implement custom sharding strategies for performance or design specialized backup procedures for critical data. This level of control ensures operations align perfectly with strategic goals, allowing technical teams to respond more efficiently to business requirements without waiting for vendor feature releases or paying premium prices for essential capabilities.
Stronger community and innovation
Open source communities drive rapid innovation through collaboration and shared expertise, often implementing new features and improvements in weeks rather than the quarterly or annual cycles typical of proprietary vendors. Unlike vendor-controlled ecosystems, alternatives to proprietary platforms provide access to a wealth of tools, tutorials, and integrations contributed by a global network of developers and users.
This vibrant ecosystem encourages faster development cycles and continuous improvement, with community-created tools for monitoring, optimization, and automation that can dramatically improve operational efficiency. When security vulnerabilities are discovered, the transparent nature of open source often leads to faster patches and more robust solutions than closed systems where fixes depend entirely on vendor priorities.
Improved resilience
Reliance on a single vendor exposes organizations to risks such as service outages, limited support options, and disruptions tied to vendor-specific challenges. MongoDB’s well-documented outages have highlighted the vulnerability of depending on a single proprietary platform for critical operations, especially when managed services like Atlas are involved.
By moving away from proprietary solutions, businesses can enhance resilience through diversified dependencies, reducing the impact of vendor-related issues. For example, organizations that implement database-agnostic applications can quickly shift workloads between different database technologies when performance issues or outages occur. This independence ensures greater stability, enabling organizations to maintain uninterrupted operations, navigate market changes with confidence, and safeguard against downtime that could disrupt business continuity and customer trust.
While the challenges of proprietary MongoDB solutions may seem daunting, organizations seeking alternatives now have viable options that provide MongoDB compatibility without the limitations, and Percona stands out as a leading solution in this space.
Percona for flexible, cost-effective MongoDB solutions
Enterprise-grade MongoDB without compromise
Percona offers 100% open source and source-available solutions that address the key challenges of proprietary MongoDB while maintaining compatibility with your existing applications. By eliminating licensing restrictions and vendor lock-in, Percona empowers organizations to regain control over their databases.
How Percona addresses key challenges
- Deployment freedom: Deploy anywhere—on-premises, cloud, or hybrid environments—with Kubernetes integration for consistent operations across platforms.
- Transparent costs: No licensing fees or hidden charges means predictable budgeting and significantly reduced TCO.
- Enterprise-ready: Built-in security features, high availability configurations, and disaster recovery options ensure your business-critical applications remain secure and operational.
- Expert backing: Access professional support services and tap into a vibrant open source community for collaborative problem-solving.
Take control of your MongoDB
As businesses reevaluate their reliance on proprietary software, the need for cost-effective, flexible, and enterprise-grade database solutions has never been clearer. MongoDB’s shift toward restrictive licensing, rising costs, and cloud-first priorities has left many organizations searching for alternatives that better align with their operational goals while protecting their bottom line and future scalability.
Percona provides a proven path forward. With transparent pricing, robust security and compliance features, and unparalleled deployment flexibility, Percona empowers businesses to regain control of their database environments. Whether your focus is on reducing costs, ensuring regulatory compliance, or maintaining full control over your enterprise infrastructure, Percona offers the tools, expertise, and support to meet your needs.
Before signing another contract with MongoDB, take a moment to evaluate whether it truly serves your organization’s evolving needs. We’ve gathered insights from IT leaders who made the difficult decision to reassess their database strategy, many of whom ultimately switched to more flexible alternatives.
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