At MongoDB, developer experience is central to adoption. When our existing API docs stack started slowing us down, we looked for a partner who could deliver both performance and flexibility. With Bump.sh, our API documentation became almost five times faster to load, dramatically improving the developer experience across our docs site.
Before Bump.sh: a fork that became a burden
Like many teams, we began our API documentation journey with Redoc, the open-source renderer. Out of the box, Redoc did the job, but MongoDB had higher expectations for performance, branding, and customization.
To make it work, MongoDB’s team forked the framework and built our own UI extensions. While this gave us the flexibility we needed in the short term, the long-term cost became clear:
- Performance bottlenecks slowed page loads for our developers.
- Limited customization meant constantly fighting against framework constraints.
- High maintenance overhead keeping our fork in sync with upstream.
- SEO issues prevented users from finding docs for specific resources from search engines.
As Zach Winters, Lead Engineer for the Docs Platform, explains:
Maintaining a fork of Redoc worked at first, but over time it became a drag. Every update meant rework, and our engineers were spending more time patching our tooling than improving developer experience.
What led us to Bump.sh
We wanted more than a renderer — we wanted a partner. The Docs Platform team outlined three non-negotiables for a new solution:
- Performance: API docs need to load quickly, even for large specs.
- Customization: Docs should feel like MongoDB — not a generic template.
- Collaboration: A vendor willing to work closely with us, not just sell a product.
That search led us to Bump.sh. Unlike larger platforms, their small, dynamic team could promise feature development aligned with our roadmap.
Note from the Bump.sh team: MongoDB is one of the first teams to benefit from our Embed mode, which offers a unique way to blend Bump.sh-powered, advanced API reference publication into existing dev portals, with perfect branding integration and seamless navigation and search experience.
Why Bump.sh won out
A few things stood out immediately:
- Turbo frames for incremental loading: Bump.sh’s approach to rendering cut load times significantly.
- Customization built-in: Instead of maintaining forks, we could apply MongoDB’s branding, dark mode, language selector, and feedback tools directly.
- Tight collaboration: The Bump.sh team committed to delivering features we needed as part of onboarding — something bigger vendors wouldn’t promise.
Working with a nimble vendor meant we weren’t just customers, we were collaborators. That speed and responsiveness was a game-changer.
Two weeks in: immediate wins
Within the first two weeks of rollout, we saw concrete benefits:
- Faster page loads → improved developer experience across our docs site.
- Less engineering overhead → no more chasing upstream changes in a fork.
- Positive team feedback → our docs writers and engineers could focus on content, not tooling.
From a business perspective, migration also brought SEO gains. Bump.sh’s automatically generated sitemaps and sitemap index are integrated into our docs index. Combined with Bump’s optimized HTML structure it made MongoDB’s APIs easier to discover through search.
John Williams, Lead Technical Writer, describes another quick win:
My team was asked to publish a new API reference quickly for a key customer. With Bump.sh, all it took was a spec file and a few clicks to publish brand new docs on our site. The ease of use and speed at which you can deploy new documentation is a key differentiator.
Looking ahead: scaling with confidence
The Bump.sh migration didn’t just solve today’s problems — it set us up for the future:
- Easier adoption of new API versions (Atlas Admin API v2 and beyond).
- Built-in support for translations (via Smartling) and localization.
- A clear path for integrating additional features like changelogs and advanced search.
Advice to other tech leads
When asked how he’d recommend Bump.sh to another engineering lead, Winters put it simply:
If your API documentation tools feel too rigid or slow to evolve, Bump.sh is the kind of partner you want. They move fast, listen closely, and deliver features that actually make a difference.
Key results
- Performance: API docs now load 4.7x faster, thanks to incremental rendering.
- Efficiency: Eliminated the Redoc fork, cutting maintenance overhead by more than 50%.
- Customization: Unified MongoDB branding across docs.
- Collaboration: Vendor partnership shaped by real-world needs.
- SEO & discoverability: Bump-generated sitemaps integrated into MongoDB docs.
🔑 Takeaway: For MongoDB, the move to Bump.sh wasn’t just a tooling upgrade — it was a shift from maintaining a burden to building alongside a partner.
About MongoDB
MongoDB is the developer data platform company empowering innovators to create, transform, and disrupt industries by unleashing the power of software and data. Headquartered in New York, with offices across the globe, MongoDB has tens of thousands of customers in more than 100 countries. The MongoDB database platform has been downloaded hundreds of millions of times, and the company’s developer community includes millions of builders who use MongoDB to power their applications every day.
