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IBM Informix vs MySQL comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Informix
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
25th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Embedded Database (9th)
MySQL
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
152
Ranking in other categories
Open Source Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Informix is 1.8%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MySQL is 6.2%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
MySQL6.2%
IBM Informix1.8%
Other92.0%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Nasir Niamat - PeerSpot reviewer
DB Consultant at i2c
Has offered a cost-effective option despite frequent technical issues and limited market demand
We find some bugs in IBM Informix. Maybe we are using it more aggressively than others. Every month or every second month, we find some bugs in it, which is not ideal. It should be rare, not this frequent. The good thing is they cover those bugs in the next release within weeks or days on demand. IBM Informix should become hybrid and should include AI features similar to other DBMS systems such as Snowflake, Redshift, and DataBricks. This would help its value rise with the market.
Varuns Ug - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Developer at NIT
Reliable transactions have supported secure payments, refunds, and bookings at high volumes
Regarding MySQL improvements, a pain point is horizontal scalability. MySQL scales very well vertically and can support read replicas, but as a system grows significantly, sharding and distributed data management can become complex compared to databases that are designed to scale horizontally from the beginning. This is one of the areas where I think MySQL should work more. Another area is handling very large analytic workloads. MySQL is excellent for transactional systems, but for large-scale analytics or reporting, specialized analytic databases may sometimes be a better fit. Apart from that, one area is performance troubleshooting. As the database grows, diagnosing things such as slow queries, lock contention, and deadlocks becomes complex.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"OLTP processing capacity and the availability of information with high availability implementation have been significantly improved."
"Replication is a valuable feature and easy to use."
"Replication, all levels of replication, query charting, and the MongoDB embedded are the most valuable features of this solution."
"Every version is faster than the previous."
"Overall, this is a great product. It works really well, is very stable, and is very scalable."
"The most valuable feature is concurrency and locking because my customers usually use databases in OLTP mode. So, for a large number of competitive users. Other features that are well valued are quick large-scale data types. It is better than Oracle."
"My advice is to take it; you will never regret it."
"IBM Informix benefits users with high availability and good integration capabilities."
"We plan to continue using this product; it's good, and I can recommend it to others."
"MySQL is a scalable tool. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of MySQL is its reliability and performance."
"A lot of the software components have been trialed and tested for often more than 10 years."
"The initial setup for the SQL database is not complex and it even integrates into the platform. You set up the recipe and then just follow the runbook, the build book. Then it works as long as you follow the procedures."
"It is a stable, reliable, and powerful solution that is quite suited for small to medium organizations and/or projects."
"The solution is free to use, which is its most valuable aspect."
"Fully scalable and stable SQL-based RDBMS, with a straightforward and easy setup."
 

Cons

"This solution is in need of more current tools."
"The technical support services need substantial improvement."
"The solution really doesn't add new features very often. Other solutions are much more actively pushing out upgrades and improvements."
"Continue extending the SQL language for compatibility with the competition's language, including Stored Procedure Language."
"For me, it's always too expensive. The problem is that Informix sometimes competes with free products, so yes, it's very expensive, but when we're talking about licensed products like SQL Server or anything, the midsize pricing could be significantly improved."
"The solution lacks some functionality."
"There should be more intelligence surrounding discovering data to be able to automatically create indexes."
"The solution should offer replication. It would be helpful if the solution would allow us to access third-party tools."
"When we have a lot of data it takes a longer time. The transaction gets stuck in a queue and if we try to stop that particular transaction, it won't abort until all the selected records have been processed."
"Maybe the way to build clusters needs to be improved."
"The GUI interface probably can be improved. MySQL can have more performance monitoring tools."
"Even for the best database, we always want the database to perform much better, so we wish MySQL would be much better, in terms of performance."
"Its scalability can be better. It is probably not as scalable as Oracle. I had some issues with connectors. I used it from a C++ program, and it required some work to make it run, but finally, it worked."
"MySQL is good but it should be able to handle the large transaction levels that Oracle can."
"Until you have expertise in data migrations and what you are doing with data, MySQL can be really easy and dangerous at the same time."
"The availability of tools could be improved in the MySQL open-source platform. They can provide more analytical tools. I haven't had any particularly difficult issues to troubleshoot on MySQL, but in the past, on Microsoft SQL Server, I had to troubleshoot some difficult issues, and better tools were in place to see what was going on in real-time on the server. So, that's the bit that is lacking on the MySQL open-source platform."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am not aware of the licensing costs or terms."
"The free edition can be enough to handle moderate-size implementations, but you may want a pay for edition to benefit from more functionality, such as replication."
"For me, it's always too expensive."
"The product has reasonable pricing. We purchase its yearly license."
"It is free. It is an open-source platform."
"We pay a yearly subscription fee."
"For the on-premise version, no license is required."
"The pricing is not much expensive, it's cheap."
"There is a license needed for this solution."
"MySQL is a free and open-source solution."
"I am using the Community Edition, which is available free of charge."
"MySQL is very cheap. It could be free. It also has a yearly licensing option."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business74
Midsize Enterprise34
Large Enterprise63
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Informix?
There is a cost reason to move from IBM Informix. It is relatively cheaper than Oracle. The second reason is that moving the whole application to a new database would require significant cost. The ...
What needs improvement with IBM Informix?
We find some bugs in IBM Informix. Maybe we are using it more aggressively than others. Every month or every second month, we find some bugs in it, which is not ideal. It should be rare, not this f...
What is your primary use case for IBM Informix?
We are using IBM Informix for OLTP systems. We are using IBM Informix although it is a technology that is not very popular compared to others. We are using it because our application was initially ...
Why are MySQL connections encrypted and what is the biggest benefit of this?
MySQL encrypts connections to protect your data and the biggest benefit from this is that nobody can corrupt it. If you move information over a network without encryption, you are endangering it, m...
Considering that there is a free version of MySQL, would you invest in one of the paid editions?
I may be considered a MySQL veteran since I have been using it since before Oracle bought it and created paid versions. So back in my day, it was all free, it was open-source and the best among sim...
What is one thing you would improve with MySQL?
One thing I would improve related to MySQL is not within the product itself, but with the guides to it. Before, when it was free, everyone was on their own, seeking tutorials and how-to videos onli...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Informix
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Shaspa, Hildebrand, Kaifa, Ranhill Powertron, Federaci‹ Farmacutica (FedeFarma), Camden Council, The German Aerospace Center (DLR), Myers, Votorantim Group, Doosan Infracore, GreenIvory
Facebook, Tumblr, Scholastic, MTV Networks, Wikipedia, Verizon Wireless, Sage Group, Glassfish Open Message Queue, and RightNow Technologies.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Informix vs. MySQL and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.