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IBM Informix vs SAP HANA comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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 Embedded Database
9th
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
25th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP HANA
Ranking in Embedded Database
1st
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (2nd), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Embedded Database category, the mindshare of IBM Informix is 3.5%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP HANA is 11.9%, up from 9.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Embedded Database Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP HANA11.9%
IBM Informix3.5%
Other84.6%
Embedded Database
 

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.
Bassem Mohammed - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Application Manager at TBTD
Integrated business processes have improved real-time analytics and financial performance
Whether I or my customers utilize SAP HANA's real-time analytics depends on the data needed to be displayed, and then choosing how to transfer the data to the analytic object, data source, or database to be displayed in the reports. It may be near real-time, real-time, or running batch every day. There are tools for integration between third-party systems, such as OData or APIs from SAP to get in or push data to other systems. Support for both structured and unstructured data helps organizations unify data sources depending on the needed data to be displayed. There are many ways to store it for report displays, but structured data will be better than unstructured data.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's stability, performance, enhanced functionality, and replication are all great features."
"My advice is to take it; you will never regret it."
"It supports multiple applications and business intelligence tools."
"Informix can support huge quantities of data with less memory and less capacity."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"Flexible Grid provides the ability to automatically create database objects, such as tables, indexes, and stored procedures on all nodes within the grid as a single operation."
"Every version is faster than the previous."
"IBM Informix benefits users with high availability and good integration capabilities."
"The data storage requirement is reduced from the original database to the HANA database."
"The solution is easy to scale."
"The solution is currently very stable."
"SAP HANA should cover all and automate your business processes without needing a lot of customizations."
"It has a very huge bandwidth and data transfer."
"The UX experience is very good."
"The speed of the solution and the clarity offered are the solution's most valuable features."
"SAP HANA is a stable solution."
 

Cons

"Continue extending the SQL language for compatibility with the competition's language, including Stored Procedure Language."
"The technical support services need substantial improvement."
"I would like to see backups from secondary servers."
"I experienced poor input/output (IO) performance."
"Every month or every second month, we find some bugs in it, which is not ideal."
"There should be more intelligence surrounding discovering data to be able to automatically create indexes."
"This product could be made easier to use for beginners."
"The support team could include local engineers to establish efficient communication. It will help us speed up the escalation process."
"I would have rated the solution higher if this version was not missing some key features the newer version has."
"The only downside of the product is that it is an expensive solution that needs to consider lowering its prices to improve the product."
"My advice to anybody looking to implement a relational database is to use Oracle, rather than HANA."
"If the developers were to enhance or improve the application logic while processing the transactions, that would be great."
"High availability and disaster recovery are very poor in HANA."
"The solution could improve by having better migration flexibility. For example, it would be helpful if there was a way for customers could check their nonproduction and production deployments."
"Ease of use could be improved in SAP HANA. I like SAP because SAP solutions can be used by anyone, which means even laymen can start working on SAP tools, but in SAP HANA modeling, you'll need to know some other technologies and sequel scripting, and you need a separate skillset, so if you don't have the skillset, you won't be able to work on SAP HANA. Making SAP HANA low-code would make it even better."
"It's a complex initial setup."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I am not aware of the licensing costs or terms."
"For me, it's always too expensive."
"The product has reasonable pricing. We purchase its yearly license."
"There is an annual license to use SAP HANA."
"We pay for a maintenance license, and the licensing cost is high. In general, it is a very expensive solution."
"Set up a consortium of consulting partners and hardware vendors to define your tech. Landscape TCO (total cost of ownership) and then approach the OEM for pricing (on-premise or on cloud or a hybrid model). Check if you can bring your own licenses for some of the existing application licenses on the new platform, to reduce TCO."
"The price is high and could be a bit cheaper."
"It is expensive, which isn't a problem for us because SAP HANA is processing the data so fast."
"The price of SAP HANA is very expensive and it is paid annually."
"SAP HANA is very expensive here in China. My company bought the SAP ERP suite, which includes SAP HANA. For others who use SAP HANA as an analytical database, CPU numbers will affect the pricing, so as a solution, it's costly."
"The licensing could improve."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
6%
 

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 Business26
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise64
 

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 ...
What are the biggest benefits of using SAP HANA?
Based on my work with SAP HANA, the biggest benefit that it can bring to your business is total data management. This product is by SAP - a company that serves almost all needs a client may have co...
Is SAP HANA’s customer and technical support reliable?
We have been using SAP HANA for a fairly short period of time and have only taken advantage of their customer support. So far, we have not had issues that required specialized help from technical s...
Is SAP HANA difficult to set up and start using?
SAP HANA is fairly easy to set up, however, I do not think a complete beginner can do it. You certainly need some preparation - either you need to have experience with similar solutions, or with ot...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Informix
SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance, HANA
 

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
Unilever, NHS 24, adidas Group, CHIO Aachen, Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), Bangkok Airways Public Company Limited
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Informix vs. SAP HANA and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.