10 January 2026 · 4 min read
Start relational
PostgreSQL handles relational data, JSON documents, full-text search, and geospatial queries competently. For most products it is the right answer for years.
One well-understood database beats three specialised ones a small team half-knows.
When a document store fits
Genuinely schemaless data with access patterns known in advance and extreme write throughput requirements. These conditions are less common than the marketing suggests.
Model access patterns first. NoSQL punishes ad-hoc queries you did not design for.
When to add a specialised store
Add Redis when you have a measured caching need, a search engine when relational full-text stops keeping up, and a time-series store when telemetry volume demands it.
Each addition is an operational burden. Add on evidence, not anticipation.
Where to go from here
If you are weighing database selection for an upcoming project, the useful next step is usually a short scoping conversation rather than a longer article. Bring your constraints — budget, timeline, existing systems, and the team you already have — and the decision usually resolves itself in an hour.
We run these as a fixed-scope discovery session with a written recommendation at the end, including the cases where our advice is that you do not need us.
Working on something like this?
Send us the brief. We will tell you what we would build, what we would cut, and roughly what it costs.
Talk to us