Case Study: VSCO achieves global scale and fast, reliable user experience with MongoDB

VSCO Relies on MongoDB to Store Terabytes of Data

VSCO, an Oakland-based startup behind the VSCO Cam app and VSCO Grid, faced rapidly growing data and scale challenges as users worldwide uploaded photos and related metadata. Traditional relational databases couldn’t keep up with the company’s need for horizontal scale, fast response times, and schema agility for a largely international user base.

VSCO adopted MongoDB to store photo metadata (geo, presets, social graph) and leverage flexible sharding to keep data close to users and enable horizontal scaling. The move enabled faster feature iteration without schema constraints, maintained consistent global performance, and positioned VSCO to support exponential data growth and expand its worldwide footprint.

VSCO

Mike Wu

Chief Technology Officer