Just my take:<p>I really don&#x27;t like RQL. Why couldn&#x27;t it just be a document flavored SQL? Having a DSL for writing in-database procedures is fine. But tying all external queries to a Builder is, from a purely aesthetic POV, pretty ugly IMO.<p>But that can be addressed down the line I&#x27;m sure. If nothing else by other people just building new DSLs on top of the Builder interfaces.<p>(Note: Yes, I realize the Builder supports map&#x2F;reduce as well. In practice I&#x27;m skeptical how well that works in an on-demand fashion.)<p>Having only one fully-managed host available is a minor negative. Though we use Cloudant right now so that&#x27;s a bit hypocritical perhaps.<p>Lack of integrated full-text search makes things (application-side) a lot more complex than Cloudant or a traditional RDBMS with integrated full-text search. Maybe not in a &quot;look what I can do&quot; prototype-ish phase, but definitely in a &quot;what would Jepsen do to my system&quot; sort of scenario (see the &quot;Warning&quot; here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rethinkdb.com&#x2F;docs&#x2F;elasticsearch&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rethinkdb.com&#x2F;docs&#x2F;elasticsearch&#x2F;</a>).<p>That means you&#x27;re going to want to routinely compare and reindex. Which ugh.<p>That&#x27;s just my 2c on why I&#x27;m not super excited about RethinkDB. Doesn&#x27;t seem a whole lot to differentiate it from other NoSQL databases outside of being a better MongoDB. It doesn&#x27;t integrate full-text-search like Cloudant. It doesn&#x27;t have transactions. It&#x27;s got this streaming thing. Which seems like a pretty niche feature. But maybe that&#x27;s just me.<p>It is free though, so that&#x27;s definitely something. If I were a cash-strapped startup that might be enough to move it near the top of my list. OTOH if I&#x27;m paying for a fully managed, hosted service that matters a whole lot less.<p>Feel free to educate me. :-)