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IBM Informix vs Teradata comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 30, 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
24th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Embedded Database (10th)
Teradata
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (6th), Backup and Recovery (20th), Data Integration (16th), Data Warehouse (3rd), BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (11th), Marketing Management (5th), Cloud Data Warehouse (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Informix is 1.9%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Teradata is 4.2%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Teradata4.2%
IBM Informix1.9%
Other93.9%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Nasir Niamat - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Kirk Robinson - PeerSpot reviewer
Has improved data quality, optimized reporting processes, and enabled predictive insights across business units
The limitation we encountered was related to speed, prompting us to increase our AWS cloud thresholds and benchmarks on the servers, adding more throughput. We have been testing that, but speed remains one of our key issues. The integration has been awesome because of the platforms and their usage, and usability is great. The most challenging aspect is finding Teradata resources, so we are focusing on internal training and looking for more Teradata experts. If Teradata could provide a list of certified experts, that would be fantastic. I rated Teradata a nine because the main area for improvement is the bandwidth of resources that could assist us in applying to our projects, specifically more certified and expert resources. The market share of Teradata professionals is limited, creating an issue for us.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It supports in-house-built applications in .NET and VB6"
"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."
"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."
"So far, we do not have a lot of issues. It's pretty problem-free."
"Replication is a valuable feature and easy to use."
"IBM Informix benefits users with high availability and good integration capabilities."
"It supports multiple applications and business intelligence tools."
"Replication, all levels of replication, query charting, and the MongoDB embedded are the most valuable features of this solution."
"I like this solution's ease of design and the fact that its performance is quite good. It is stable as well."
"It has given our business the ability to gain insights into the data and create data labs for analysis and PoCs."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of running queries."
"Teradata can be deployed on-premise, on the cloud, or in a virtual machine, which means customers can move without having to create their architecture all over again."
"It's the same as your visual database. I like the fast load feature for data, the BTQ solution is very good, and storage procedures are very fast."
"The cloud is ten times better than physical hardware; it is more cost-effective and the upgrade process is ten times easier."
"It has reduced a lot of reworking on maintaining indexes, partitions, etc."
"It's stable and reliable."
 

Cons

"Continue extending the SQL language for compatibility with the competition's language, including Stored Procedure Language."
"The solution really doesn't add new features very often."
"This product could be made easier to use for beginners."
"The pricing is a bit expensive."
"It would be helpful to have IBM salespeople know that Informix exists, and sell it. Currently, it is completely ignored by IBM."
"There should be more intelligence surrounding discovering data to be able to automatically create indexes."
"The solution lacks some functionality."
"This solution is in need of more current tools."
"It is hard for some of our users to set up rules for cleansing and transforming data, so this is something that could be improved."
"Teradata should focus on functionality for building predictive models because, in that regard, it can definitely improve."
"Teradata could be improved by having a web interface that can really help users to plug and play."
"The reporting side wasn't very good in the past, but with the latest versions, it's getting better. Still, the friendliness of the PDC reporting and functionality needs to be improved."
"The only issue our company has with Teradata IntelliFlex is that it is not cost-effective because of the way the product has been designed."
"From my perspective, it would be good if they gave better ITIN/R plugins to use the data for AI modeling, or data science modeling. We can do it now; however, it could be more elegant in terms of interfacing."
"The following could be better: licensing, architecture openness, integration with other tools."
"Teradata is an expensive tool. Like, if you're already using Microsoft products like Windows, they'll market all their products together. And with the rise of cloud technologies, companies will adopt solutions that offer them some privileges or facilities. Similar to how SAP does it in the market, so do Microsoft and other companies. Even Oracle and other such tools are quite commonly seen compared to Teradata's competitors in everyday solutions."
 

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."
"The product has reasonable pricing. We purchase its yearly license."
"For me, it's always too expensive."
"The tool costs about 30,000 euros a month, while Azure Synapse SQL only costs 10,000."
"Teradata is not cheap, but you get what you pay for."
"It is still a very expensive solution. While I very much like the pure technological supremacy of the software itself, I believe Teradata as a company needs to become more affordable. They are already losing the market to more flexible or cheaper competitors."
"I am using the free version of Teradata."
"Teradata is currently making improvements in this area."
"The cost is significantly high."
"Users have to pay a yearly licensing fee for Teradata IntelliFlex, which is very expensive."
"The price of the solution could be reduced, it is expensive."
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Comparison Review

it_user232068 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 5, 2015
Netezza vs. Teradata
Original published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/should-i-choose-net Two leading Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) architectures for Data Warehousing (DW) are IBM PureData System for Analytics (formerly Netezza) and Teradata. I thought talking about the similarities and differences…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare 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 Enterprise50
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Informix?
It supports multiple applications and business intelligence tools.
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...
Comparing Teradata and Oracle Database, which product do you think is better and why?
I have spoken to my colleagues about this comparison and in our collective opinion, the reason why some people may declare Teradata better than Oracle is the pricing. Both solutions are quite simi...
Which companies use Teradata and who is it most suitable for?
Before my organization implemented this solution, we researched which big brands were using Teradata, so we knew if it would be compatible with our field. According to the product's site, the comp...
Is Teradata a difficult solution to work with?
Teradata is not a difficult product to work with, especially since they offer you technical support at all levels if you just ask. There are some features that may cause difficulties - for example,...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Informix
IntelliFlex, Aster Data Map Reduce, , QueryGrid, Customer Interaction Manager, Digital Marketing Center, Data Mover, Data Stream Architecture, Teradata Vantage Enterprise (DIY)
 

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
Netflix
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Informix vs. Teradata and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
873,085 professionals have used our research since 2012.