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PostgreSQL pros and cons

Vendor: PostgreSQL

4.2 out of 5

125 reviews
96% willing to recommend

1,178 followers

Pros & Cons summary

PostgreSQL is open-source and cost-effective, supporting diverse database environments from small businesses to enterprises with robust performance for structured and unstructured data. While it offers seamless Oracle compatibility and data migration tools, installation is simple, yet integration with .NET and security features are limited. Performance can falter under heavy loads, lacking temporal SQL support, and memory management is less efficient compared to rivals like MySQL.

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Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

PostgreSQL is valued for its stability and scalability, making it suitable for both small and enterprise environments.

It is an open-source database management system, providing high performance without licensing costs.

There is significant compatibility with Oracle, facilitating smooth data migration.

PostgreSQL supports structured and unstructured data, making it versatile for various applications.

It efficiently handles complex queries and offers powerful built-in features, enhancing database operations and performance.

CONS

Documentation and technical support for PostgreSQL could be improved, especially in terms of maturing and enhancing backup features.

PostgreSQL lacks built-in high availability tools, relying on external options instead.

Integration with platforms and deployment in microservices architecture require enhancement.

PostgreSQL has higher memory usage compared to competitors under demanding loads with many concurrent connections.

Memory management in PostgreSQL is less effective than in other databases like MySQL.

PostgreSQL Pros review quotes

JT

Jason Tumusiime

Software Developer at a healthcare company with 1-10 employees

Dec 7, 2020

Clustering will be the number 1 feature. It is also open-source so it is free. It can also be clustered, to allow fault tolerance.

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reviewer1593588

Subdirector - Digital Products and Services at a media company with 501-1,000 employees

Aug 17, 2021

The solution provides complete support in terms of the SQL dialect and behaves nicely when it comes to transactions.

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reviewer1599825

System Architect at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 22, 2021

Postgres is rock solid when deployed according to best practices as documented by the PostgreSQL community. When it's installed correctly, PostgreSQL is an enterprise-grade solution.

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Faustine Chisasa

System Administrator at TZ Telecom Ltd.

Feb 10, 2024

We managed to reduce the storage space needed to 10% of the original size, without affecting data integrity, and we significantly improved the performance.

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KÇ

Data Analytics and Business Intelligence Manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

Dec 27, 2020

The product is quite flexible.

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reviewer1428423

Head of Technical Support at a real estate/law firm with 51-200 employees

Jul 9, 2021

The product is very similar to the SQL Server.

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reviewer1089354

System/Security Engineer at CACI International Inc.

Dec 4, 2021

The main value is that it is open source, which means it is free. Our organization has the initiative to go to open source to cut down on cost. Oracle costs us $6 million a year right now, which is killing us, and Postgres costs nothing. So, there is a big push to go to Postgres.

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NK

Senior IT Manager at a pharma/biotech company with 1-10 employees

Mar 19, 2021

The initial setup is quick and easy.

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reviewer1644435

IT Systems Administrator at a transportation company with 51-200 employees

Aug 26, 2021

It is a pretty comprehensive database system. Its performance is good, and it does what it is supposed to do. It also integrates very well.

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Software Engineer at Medflix

Jun 23, 2023

Postgres has some functions called JSONB aggregators or other aggregators, which are quite useful.

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PostgreSQL Cons review quotes

JT

Jason Tumusiime

Software Developer at a healthcare company with 1-10 employees

Dec 7, 2020

It could be improved by using parallelization. You want basically, distributed computing.

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reviewer1593588

Subdirector - Digital Products and Services at a media company with 501-1,000 employees

Aug 17, 2021

A better graphic user-interface would be nice to see.

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reviewer1599825

System Architect at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 22, 2021

I'd like to see better memory management. I think that that's one of the few areas that Postgres does not handle as well as MySQL does or did.

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Free Report: PostgreSQL Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about PostgreSQL. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.

838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Faustine Chisasa

System Administrator at TZ Telecom Ltd.

Feb 10, 2024

PostgreSQL uses high memory compared to its counterparts when a highly demanding load is involved, especially one that makes many concurrent connections to the database.

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KÇ

Data Analytics and Business Intelligence Manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

Dec 27, 2020

The pricing could be better.

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reviewer1428423

Head of Technical Support at a real estate/law firm with 51-200 employees

Jul 9, 2021

I'm not really able to customize it.

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reviewer1089354

System/Security Engineer at CACI International Inc.

Dec 4, 2021

They need to have a better graphical interface. There is a tool called pgAdmin 4 that they use, which is free. It is written in Java, and it is slow. They need to have a better product that is similar to Toad for Oracle, but, of course, it is hard to get something that's really great and free. Other than that, it is great.

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NK

Senior IT Manager at a pharma/biotech company with 1-10 employees

Mar 19, 2021

It would be great if the solution offered even more integration capabilities.

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reviewer1644435

IT Systems Administrator at a transportation company with 51-200 employees

Aug 26, 2021

There are some products out there that have a slightly different method of implementation for the SQL language. Some of those are slightly better in some areas, and PostgreSQL is slightly better in some areas. I would probably like to match all of those products together. It is just down to the functionality. For example, Oracle has a number of options within SQL that are outside of what you would class as the SQL standard. PostgreSQL misses some of those, but PostgreSQL does other things that are better than what Oracle does. I would like to merge those two products so that there is a certain amount of functionality in a single product.

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Software Engineer at Medflix

Jun 23, 2023

We have to set up event API, which takes a lot of events from the user.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 48)

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Open Source Databases

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Popular Comparisons

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MySQL vs PostgreSQL

MariaDB vs PostgreSQL

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