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IBM Informix vs SQL Server 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)
SQL Server
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
274
Ranking in other categories
Database Management Systems (DBMS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 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 SQL Server is 10.7%, down from 17.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.7%
IBM Informix1.8%
Other87.5%
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.
Peter Larsson - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Warehouse Lead at Resurs Bank AB (publ.)
Ledger and seamless integrations have strengthened trusted analytics and unified workloads
SQL Server's high availability and disaster recovery features work for supporting mission-critical applications, but there is much more to wish for. These features are not quite ready yet, although they do function. However, they could be significantly better. High availability and disaster recovery features should be improved in the next releases. I have noticed that everything could be improved or enhanced in the future, particularly temporal tables and window functions. Sometimes, I believe Microsoft releases features to stay ahead of competitors, but they do not make them feature-rich or feature-complete. They release something to be ahead of leaders and then seem to forget to maintain and upgrade them. I want Microsoft to pay more attention and be more mindful about the things they implement. It is fine to do a first release that works, but you cannot simply abandon it in the following years without service packs and improvements. You must continue to build on features rather than forgetting about them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The scalability is very good."
"This solution has made financial reporting possible by allowing financial people the opportunity to set Informix to "Auto Pilot" so that they can attend other duties."
"IBM Informix benefits users with high availability and good integration capabilities."
"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."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"For IoT business cases, having Informix Enterprise Edition work on edge computers, like Raspberry Pi and using Informix replication, makes complex situations simple to build and maintain."
"Informix can support huge quantities of data with less memory and less capacity."
"Every version is faster than the previous."
"In summary, this is a good product, I plan to continue using it, and I definitely recommend it."
"The best feature in SQL Server is the CDC mechanism for adding data incrementally."
"One of the things I most like about SQL Server is the log shipping piece. This is a great feature."
"SQL Server is easy to manage."
"SQL Server has a dynamic resource allocation feature that allows disk and memory usage to scale to meet changing database demands, providing better performance and simplifying software management."
"SQL Server is a good solution for me."
"We're satisfied with the stability."
"The backup capabilities are extremely good."
 

Cons

"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 really doesn't add new features very often."
"Every month or every second month, we find some bugs in it, which is not ideal."
"The solution should offer replication. It would be helpful if the solution would allow us to access third-party tools."
"The solution doesn't include functionality like data anonymization."
"There should be more intelligence surrounding discovering data to be able to automatically create indexes."
"The product needs a lot more marketing involvement from IBM."
"It would be nice if there was a feature to search for a specific value across multiple tables."
"We're paying too much for licensing at this time. They need to work on the pricing."
"Third-party services from Redgate should be built-in to it, like SQL Search."
"SQL Server doesn't have proper bitmap indexing, proper columnar databases, or proper implementation of materialized views."
"The performance could be better. When we pump in millions of records, we start struggling, and that's why we want improvement in those areas."
"When we run into problems, it's usually during installation, and finding answers to the problem has been a nightmare because the documentation is terrible."
"I would like to have the option to use fewer processors for certain tasks, thus reducing the licensing fee."
"It pesters you to update the Client every month when there is nothing new that you really need to add, but it is constantly pestering you. I do not care for it."
 

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."
"For me, it's always too expensive."
"I am not aware of the licensing costs or terms."
"The product has reasonable pricing. We purchase its yearly license."
"The areas that need improvement are with regards to the commercial aspect of the solution, the licensing cost could be reduced in order to help customers to adopt it."
"The price of SQL Server could be reduced, the license is expensive. We have an annual subscription."
"It's a bit expensive."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"There is a subscription that needs to be purchased to use the solution."
"There is no licensing cost for SQL Server."
"There is a license required for this solution. One of the problems is for smaller businesses to purchases a license because it is expensive for a lot of them to afford."
"For smaller companies, they find this solution expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
40%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
4%
Comms Service Provider
4%
 

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 Business119
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise118
 

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 ...
Would you say the price of SQL Server is high compared to that of similar products?
SQL Server is fairly priced because it has various editions, depending on the number of users, servers, or core packs you are using. If you compare the product to others in this category, the price...
Has using SQL Server helped your organization in any way?
SQL Server has helped my organization through partitioning to distribute the workload, as it splits them up into smaller pieces so the machines can easily deal with it. However, this comes with a h...
Which authentication mode is best for SQL Server?
My company connects through SQL Server authentication. We have company Windows accounts, but we do not want to connect the two, out of security concerns and to keep things separated for our own pur...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Informix
Microsoft SQL Server, MSSQL, MS SQL
 

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
Microsoft SQL Server is used by businesses in every industry, including Great Western Bank, Aviva, the Volvo Car Corporation, BMW, Samsung, Principality Building Society, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Informix vs. SQL Server and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,611 professionals have used our research since 2012.