I don't think that article is a good case at all and with the lack of transparent pricing even harder to understand. We all care about efficiency but still not sure why I would use this over existing databases which are cheap to throw some more memory at. As you pointed out below I think CRDT is interesting. I would love to see some real-world comparisons to see how much their efficiency claims actually matter.
I don't like lack of pricing either. It would be a deal breaker for me as far as using their stuff. Maybe that's because they're in beta.
But the actual capabilities of their service - it just sounds like you didn't even care to learn what they offer because there's a lot to like.
First, it's a hosted SQLite. For those who know SQLite and not other databases is a reason enough to use it over hosted Postgres or hosted Mysql
They claim involvement of Richard Hipp, the creator of SQLite. That's as huge boost of credibility right there.
They have multi-node replication with Raft. That's not unique but also not something you get everywhere. Most hosted database services just give you a database on a single server.
They have Pub/Sub - that's even more rare than multi-node replication.
They have offline synch where you can sync your cloud db to a sqlite db on a mobile device. I believe that's both useful to many people and 100% unique to their service.
WebLite is also 100% unique and seems very useful to web frontends.
They claim they'll provide a way to run your code, compiled to wasm, on their servers. That would also be 100% unique to them.
They have SDKs for lots of languages.
So technologically that's very compelling and they have useful features not available anywhere else.
