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Caroline Bentolila - PeerSpot reviewer
Process Automation Analyst at Stone Pagamentos
Real User
Top 10
High availability, simple setup, and scales well
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of MySQL is its reliability and performance."
  • "The GUI could improve in MySQL."

What is our primary use case?

I am using MySQL for business data queries.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of MySQL is its reliability and performance.

What needs improvement?

The GUI could improve in MySQL.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using MySQL for approximately 12 years.

Buyer's Guide
MySQL
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about MySQL. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate the stability of MySQL a ten out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have approximately 100 people using this solution.

We plan to increase the usage of the solution in the future.

I rate the scalability of MySQL a ten out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

I have not used support from the vendor.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of MySQL was easy.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate MySQL a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Ahmed-Ramy - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at TMentors
Real User
Open-source and easy to implement but needs a lot of updating
Pros and Cons
  • "It's a mature solution that's been around for decades."
  • "It isn't as reliable as an SQL Server."

What is our primary use case?

We use the product for database management, as a database engine.

What is most valuable?

We use it for different projects, mainly when we have lots of data and the customer can't afford to pay the license of SQL Server, which is not a cheap one.

That's the main reason you use MySQL or Postgres or other databases. It's less expensive. 

The solution is stable.

The scalability is very good.

It's a mature solution that's been around for decades.

It is very easy to set up the product.

What needs improvement?

The support in MySQL is horrible.

It isn't as reliable as an SQL Server.

I don't see MySQL being improved at all, like in the last 10 years. It has been at the same level for a long time.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Its stability is quite good. There are no bugs or glitches. it doesn't crash or freeze. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable, however, sometimes you might have issues. You need to have the knowledge to make sure that you can scale. That said, there are a lot of used MySQL implementations all around the world, which shows that it's a proven product. It has been there for more than 20 years or so.

How are customer service and support?

The support is not ideal. It could be better. It runs under Oracle, and Oracle support is not the best company when it comes to supporting - especially since MySQL used to be a free, open-source solution, and remains free. Oracle doesn't have this approach in its DNA. It's an enterprise and they're not into open-source ways of working. That's why sometimes we move from MySQL to Postgres, which is similar yet has the support in the community.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I've also used Postgre and SQL Server.

This product is not as solid as SQL Server. It's not like it's a lesser quality thing, however, it's not as reliable as SQL Server. The engine is a whole different engine. SQL Server is a full-featured database engine, and MySQL is based on what we call a file-based database. It's like flat files as a database engine, so it's an underdog, if you can call it that, when it comes to database engines. That said, it works fine.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is not that complex. It's simple and straightforward for the most part.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is open-source. We don't pay for it.

There are options to get professional support from Oracle and, for that, the pricing really comes up, therefore, it's not competitive anymore. For that reason, it might be even wiser to get Oracle Database than get MySQL and pay for the premium support.

What other advice do I have?

We are just end-users. However, we are happy to work with them.

With Microsoft, we are a customer, partner, and vendor. We aren't partners with Oracle. 

I would rate the solution at a six out of ten.

They just need to assign a great team to MySQL, basically, and Oracle should just leave them alone to improve the product as the product hasn't been improved in the last 10 years. Since Oracle acquired it, it has been in decline. They need to do a lot, not in terms of features. In terms of the mindset.

I would recommend Postgres which is similar to MySQL, over this product. Even the clients are coming to us with such requests. They will flat-out tell us: "we hear that MySQL is having issues and we don't want to deal with Oracle and all that kind of stuff, so let's use Postgres." It's easy to migrate over. It's almost seamless, which makes it a very attractive option.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
MySQL
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about MySQL. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer1769190 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
High performance, simple to use, and straightforward development
Pros and Cons
  • "MySQL is easy to use, has fast performance, and it is comfortable for end-user to use. The schema level and structure we are using are very simple and easy to understand. Additionally, packaging tool development is straightforward and the data is presented in a way that is very simple to understand."
  • "In an upcoming release, there should be something added similar to EPL. For example, when using the flow diagram, we can create a schema. We have two useful features to add or create the table, but there should be some UI features to allow us to drag and drop to create other schemas. This would be very helpful."

What is our primary use case?

We are using MySQL for backend operations since we are a software backend developer. We are using this tool in our backend application for acquiring the data.

We mainly use MySQL for our Relational Database Management System(RDBMS). We are maintaining our customer data in a defined way. We have to create various schema levels. We are presenting the customer data, such as name, mobile number, what was purchased, and what they like or dislike. Once we create the schema, a set of data, we need to maintain the unique constraints.

For example, for customers, we'll assign a unique ID to each record, that will be a primary key. All these SQL constraints we'll use and there should no variance or replication of data isolated. When we perform any update operations, it should not affect any of the data isolated. 

We need to take care of many things, such as consistency, isolation, and variability for constructing any database. There are a few more concepts as well, such as normalization and PL/SQL. For example, if I want to run a job at a particular time, the product will use PL/SQL. We are like implementing our coding skills to databases.

Our operations are on-premise. However, we are in the process of moving everything to the cloud.

How has it helped my organization?

We have many repositories in one table that we are completing for customers' data that are store product data. There are various pieces of data and data should be in the same format. For this purpose, we are using RDBMS. The data in the repository should be able to be accessed in one place which is Oracle SQL Developer. MySQL can store data for a longer duration as compared to other data solutions, such as MariaDB, which can only store data for one day. MySQL can store data for a longer period of time, and we can have primary and secondary data as well for backup purposes.

What is most valuable?

MySQL is easy to use, has fast performance, and it is comfortable for end-user to use. The schema level and structure we are using are very simple and easy to understand. Additionally, packaging tool development is straightforward and the data is presented in a way that is very simple to understand.

What needs improvement?

MySQL can improve some of its functions. However, it is dependent on the use case. For example, if we are having multiple database connections in this tool, and we are performing one operation in one database, it takes a lot of time due to the reason we are selecting and processing the data. 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. This sometimes can be a lot of time and it can hold up our live processing of transactions. This product should be able to handle multiple processing at a time.

In an upcoming release, there should be something added similar to EPL. For example, when using the flow diagram, we can create a schema. We have two useful features to add or create the table, but there should be some UI features to allow us to drag and drop to create other schemas. This would be very helpful.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using MySQL for approximately four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have found the development tools to be highly stable in MySQL.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of MySQL is very good. There are no barriers to it. It can be used and accommodated in any particular language. We can use it with Java and Python.

We have almost everyone in my organization using the solution. We have developers and support teams all using it. If my organization has 1,000 people, almost 900 people out of them were using the service.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have evaluated MariaDB.

How was the initial setup?

We use a solution called Jenkins to help us with all the pipelines. The pipelines are all created and configured in the Jenkins. We are in a distributed server architecture and the full process can take approximately 20 minutes for one server.

What about the implementation team?

If we have a large amount of data we have to take care of it. If this particular data is not used over the years, we have to make maintenance decisions on it after we use it. The developer administrator and the team will be responsible.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We are using the licensed version of MySQL.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise others that this is a useful tool.

I rate MySQL an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1461639 - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy Director General at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
It is very easy to install and has all basic database features
Pros and Cons
  • "It is very easy to install and has all basic database features."
  • "We require more ease of use, scalability, and high availability. These are some of the critical features that we use and look for in a product. It should be easier to manage clusters. Scalability is very important for us because our projects and concurrency requirements are quite big. We also require high availability of the server, application, and other things. It should also have more performance-based features or enhancements from the performance point of view. When we divide a database, it should be able to handle the queries very fast."

What is our primary use case?

I have been working for 25 to 30 years in this domain, and during this time, I have used various products such as MySQL, SQL Server, and PostgreSQL. Currently, in my product, I am using PostgreSQL, and in some projects, I am using MySQL. We are using the latest version of this solution.

We do projects for various government departments. We have used this solution for the transport department for vehicle registration, driving license, and all such things. We have also used it for port projects, depots, educational counseling projects, school databases, higher education, and health registry. As an organization, we have a lot of use cases of this solution.

What is most valuable?

It is very easy to install and has all basic database features.

What needs improvement?

We require more ease of use, scalability, and high availability. These are some of the critical features that we use and look for in a product. It should be easier to manage clusters. Scalability is very important for us because our projects and concurrency requirements are quite big. We also require high availability of the server, application, and other things.

It should also have more performance-based features or enhancements from the performance point of view. When we divide a database, it should be able to handle the queries very fast.

How are customer service and technical support?

Whenever required, we also take support, but our people are quite experienced. They are able to manage it most of the time.

How was the initial setup?

Its installation is quite easy.

What about the implementation team?

We have our own people who do the deployment. We have various teams for various projects, and the size of the deployment team depends on the project. We have people who basically look after the DB activities, installation, and consolidation.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

There is a licensing cost because we are going for a proprietary product. There are some other versions for which there is no licensing cost.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution depending on the project. If a project requires the kind of features that are available in this solution, I would recommend this solution.

I would rate MySQL an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Implementer
PeerSpot user
Technical Director at Metrofibre Networx
Real User
Top 20
An easy-to-install solution that is used for customer management authentication
Pros and Cons
  • "I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten since it has been running flawlessly."
  • "The licensing cost of the solution is expensive, which MySQL needs to consider improving."

What is our primary use case?

We use MySQL for customer management authentication in our company.

What is most valuable?

The use of MySQL is really dictated by the software we use. So we have put software that dictates the use of MySQL and MongoDB. We think we've found the goal of the company related to strengthening its business systems.

What needs improvement?

Since we started the development, like, three years ago, it's just been improving, so there are no areas that need to improve. It is easy to use.

The licensing cost of the solution is expensive, which MySQL needs to consider improving.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using MySQL for three years. It's based on the call systems or based on the console.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten since it has been running flawlessly.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It works well. So, I rate its scalability a ten out of ten. Our company is managing hundreds to thousands of clients, but we use MySQL for different projects. So, around 50 users work on it.

In terms of increasing the solution's usage, I think we've done enough, like, stabilizing MySQL.

How are customer service and support?

Our company has contacted the technical support of MySQL. It was very easy to get connected to them. However, it cost us a fortune. For SMBs in South Africa, a thousand or ten thousand dollars an hour is a lot of money. It was expensive, but it was worth it.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have previously used a solution for location and mapping-related stuff. Our choice to move to MySQL was dictated by software. So, we use different programs for applications.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment process takes a few seconds.

What about the implementation team?

We had to seek the help of some consultants to implement the product since there was some difficult stuff. But that was long ago. Nowadays, we avoid seeking help from consultants since it has become pretty simple. So, better experienced and well-trained people would do it for us. It's not a problem.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I believe we have a few cluster solutions. I think that MySQL is a premium product. But I don't manage that part.

What other advice do I have?

The solution's documentation and support are awesome. Also, its speed has increased in the last few years. So, we have never had any issues with it. If there were any errors, then they were human errors.

Today with many other options, we stick with MySQL and recommend it to others. There are so many other things that are more suitable for different purposes, and I will have to do research to know more about them. MySQL has been around for a decade, so something cannot go wrong. Its big support communities make it easy to resolve problems since there is always somebody who can help.

I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Clinical Data Management Principal at Vertex-in-Healthcare
Real User
A mature solution with stable performance for database management
Pros and Cons
  • "We are completely comfortable with the database’s performance and it is a mature product. My organization was looking for an open-source database for our smaller customers like the community edition. For bigger customers, we can scale into commercial and supported editions."
  • "I would like to improve the solution’s pricing for licenses."

What is our primary use case?

Our organization uses MySQL as an ERP database for transactional and financial systems.

What is most valuable?

We are completely comfortable with the database’s performance and it is a mature product. My organization was looking for an open-source database for our smaller customers like the community edition. For bigger customers, we can scale into commercial and supported editions.

What needs improvement?

I would like to improve the solution’s pricing for licenses.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is a very stable product. We have had no reason to be concerned about its stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable and it is one of the reasons why we chose the tool. Oracle has the information documented. We have a solution that we sell to the end users. There are about 50-200 users of that solution who may be using it simultaneously. We also have dozens of clients like that.

How are customer service and support?

Our solution’s end-user customers contact us for technical support. We haven’t felt the need to contact Oracle’s customer support.

How was the initial setup?

The technical preparation for our company to migrate from the previous database was about three months. We did our homework and shortlisted three potential solutions. We invested a month’s time to ensure that our solution could operationally run on MySQL. We also built migration capabilities to facilitate migration and rolled out upgrades to our customers. We never had any engineering issues during the implementation process.

What about the implementation team?

We did the deployment in-house. Our company had the in-house skills to do it.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I would rate the solution’s pricing a six out of ten. The solution is not cheap but it’s a fair value. The pricing depends on the use cases of our customers. Some of our customers use the community edition which is license free and a good fit for their use cases. However, we encourage our bigger customers to sign up because of the scalability issues. The paid versions get direct technical support from Oracle.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. Our company is a service provider that has designed and built a solution. We sell it to other third parties. We are comfortable with MySQL. The solution being owned by Oracle and its brand positioning influenced a big part of our decision. The solution is very consistent with its peer group and we accept the solution’s range of functionalities.

We are happy with our choice. We evaluated over ten solutions before choosing MySQL. I am sure that we would be making the same decision if we were to do it all over again.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
reviewer937698 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Software Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Free, stable, and full-featured
Pros and Cons
  • "It is free, which is probably its most valuable feature. It is a pretty full-featured relational database. It really does everything we need it to do."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

We're on a software development team. We develop applications.

We're currently running version 5.7 of MySQL, and we are going to be upgrading to version 8 this year.

MySQL server currently is in a co-location center. We've got a hosting provider that takes care of that for us. We are looking at moving it into AWS, but that won't happen this year. We do have a smaller MySQL RDS instance in AWS right now, but it is pretty minimal. 

What is most valuable?

It is free, which is probably its most valuable feature. It is a pretty full-featured relational database. It really does everything we need it to do. 

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using MySQL for seven years in my current company, and I have probably used it for another two or three years in a previous company.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable.

How are customer service and support?

I haven't dealt with them.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We're using the open-source version right now, which is free. I do see some value in some of the more enterprise functions. We're using the open-source version right now, and I was interested in the MySQL Enterprise version really for the tools that they provide, but we decided not to make the purchase.

What other advice do I have?

There are certain things that it doesn't do as well as SQL Server. There are certain things that you can do to swamp the server, such as it is just not very responsive to more complicated joins and things like that. Unfortunately, you have to try to learn what those things are, but there are certain things like correlated sub-queries and more complicated approaches that it doesn't support, and you can hang the server in doing that. So, even though it has standardized the SQL queries and other things, there are some things that it doesn't perform particularly well, such as more complicated joined scenarios. We join several tables at a time, but we tend to do that on well-known indices, primary keys, and things like that, but if you're doing something more sophisticated than that, it becomes more challenging. These things that I've mentioned are written up by people, and once you learn those things, you develop techniques to work around them. You take different approaches to solve the problem for those things. You have to do that anyway as a developer. You don't just write code and throw it out there on a production server. You certainly need a totally separate test environment and all that.

I would rate MySQL an eight out of 10.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Senior Application Programmer/Analyst, Team Lead at a university with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Its strength is in the fast connection, query and insert performance. The weakest link is replication.

What is our primary use case?

Used as a data store for RESTful web services and other web applications. Was deployed to store RSS feeds, and for 100 joomla instances. 

How has it helped my organization?

MySQL is widely supported. We were able to integrate it with several different projects using various different programming languages with no issues.

Worked with Java, Perl, PHP, C# and C code. 

What is most valuable?

MySQL’s strength is in its fast connection, query and insert performance. I’ve benchmarked MySQL against several NoSQL and SQL databases and found it to be faster for getting lots of data inserted quickly.

What needs improvement?

The weakest link is replication. MySQL’s replication is touchy and doesn’t support master-to-master setups.

MySQL’s replication was implemented by playing back SQL statements getting executed on the master database node. That means if a slave node gets behind, it has to catch up by running every SQL query that has executed on the master. When the slave gets too far out of date, it is unable to catch up because the replication log is lost. 

Master to master replication is used to allow writes to either node in the cluster (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE).  Since MySQL does not support this, you can only safely send SELECT queries to slave nodes.  If you run an insert, update or delete against the slave node, then it is out of sync with the master and may break if a later replication event comes from the master on the same table.


For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I’ve had an issue where an InnoDB database grew too big and got corrupted. I was unable to recover it because there was not enough space on the server either. Be sure to have enough space.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We did encounter some scalability issues as it has limited clustering support, it requires scaling up rather than out to some degree. Of course, you can have read replicas. It also has a fall-off on performance with very high workloads, but it takes awhile to get there.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

MySQL has replaced Microsoft SQL Server in several cases. MySQL is easier to manage and much more cost-effective.

How was the initial setup?

The security model is different than the other databases.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

There are tuning and monitoring benefits for people who purchase MySQL rather than using the free version.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Looked at Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL

What other advice do I have?

The porting code to or from MySQL is not that complicated, but the date type/format and functions are the biggest hurdles. Handling booleans data type is less efficient than the BIT type in the SQL Server.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free MySQL Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free MySQL Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.