Amazon Aurora vs IBM Informix comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM are both solutions in the Relational Databases Tools category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.5, while IBM is ranked #24 with an average rating of 6.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 2.7% mindshare in SQL, compared to IBM’s 1.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Amazon Aurora

Read 20 Amazon Aurora reviews

1,648 Views
1,615 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Informix

Read 17 IBM Informix reviews

1,172 Views
1,125 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Amazon Aurora

IBM Informix

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

IBM Informix and Amazon Aurora are competing in the database management system market. Amazon Aurora often seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive advanced feature set and scalability, offering a competitive edge in features and ease of deployment.

Features: IBM Informix is noted for its efficient data sharding, spatial data support, and online transaction processing capabilities. Amazon Aurora, by comparison, offers high availability and global reach, thanks to its distributed, fault-tolerant, self-healing storage systems. Its scalability and integration with AWS services are critical advantages, with features such as consistent low-latency replication and seamless integration with other AWS tools.

Room for Improvement: IBM Informix could improve by enhancing cloud-native capabilities and streamlining the deployment process for better cloud integration. It could also benefit from more advanced automation features similar to those seen in rival solutions. Amazon Aurora might focus on reducing costs associated with large-scale operations and offering enhanced data migration tools for users shifting from non-cloud environments. Further refinement of advanced features may also be beneficial to efficient operations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon Aurora’s cloud-native design facilitates seamless scaling and integration within the AWS ecosystem, supported by extensive documentation and strong customer support. In contrast, IBM Informix, more traditionally an on-premises solution, requires more significant setup effort. Nonetheless, it maintains robust customer support channels.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Informix involves an upfront investment impacting initial ROI, which might be mitigated by its lower long-term maintenance costs. Amazon Aurora, with a pay-as-you-go model, offers potentially lower initial costs and increasing ROI as businesses leverage its scalable nature. The flexible pricing model is seen as economically favorable for scenarios requiring dynamic scaling.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Aurora vs. IBM Informix Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora vs. IBM Informix

September 2025

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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

Amazon Aurora

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

7th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

IBM Informix

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

24th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Embedded Database (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon Aurora is 2.7%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Informix is 1.9%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Relational Databases Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Amazon Aurora	2.7%
IBM Informix	1.9%
Other	95.4%

Relational Databases Tools

Featured Reviews

Adnan Shafiq

Associate Vice President - Database Management (Principal Solutions Architect) at Northbay

High availability and geographical redundancy ensure reliable performance and cost efficiency

Amazon Aurora provides up to fifteen to sixteen read replicas. It replicates data across multiple Availability Zones, ensuring high availability and geographical redundancy, which can be considered a GR instead of a DR. As a managed service, maintenance tasks like backup and restore are handled by AWS, saving my organization significant time and money. Additionally, its fast cloning feature allows us to create a new clone from a large database swiftly, similar to a zero-copy cloning feature in Snowflake. This makes Amazon Aurora a compelling choice for my organization.

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Nasir Niamat

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of Amazon Aurora include the global instance with the global writer endpoint, which allows failovers and instance switches without requiring changes in my code, thanks to the default global Route 53 endpoint."

"The solution’s scalability is good since we don’t need to take a maintenance window during unpredictable workloads. I like the solution’s behind-the-scenes happenings. It is a great feature."

"My overall experience with Amazon Aurora is very positive. I rate it ten out of ten for its reliability and efficiency."

"The most valuable feature is that the maintainability is offloaded to the service provider. I don't have to maintain a database or do any administrative tasks, which comes in handy."

"One of the standout features of Amazon Aurora is that we do not need to maintain disaster recovery or manage availability zones."

"Aurora's compatibility with MySQL or PostgreSQL benefited our database management. The migration from on-premise MySQL to Aurora was similar, so we didn't need to change our source code."

"The provision of custom read and write endpoints eliminates the need for managing a separate proxy load balancer."

"Amazon Aurora's best features are about scaling up and scaling down, which is perfect."

More Amazon Aurora pros

"The stability is incredible. I have customers with uptimes of several years."

"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."

"It supports multiple applications and business intelligence tools."

"Every version is faster than the previous."

"Replication is a valuable feature and easy to use."

"IBM Informix benefits users with high availability and good integration capabilities."

"The scalability is very good."

"It supports in-house-built applications in .NET and VB6"

More IBM Informix pros

Cons

"A challenge I noticed is during migration from PostgreSQL RDS to Amazon Aurora. There are technical challenges, such as the inability to provision the database using a PostgreSQL snapshot directly."

"I would like to see performance insights on the database based on the queries. Currently, we use SolarWinds as the monitoring tool. I would like to leverage SolarWinds’ performance insights in AWS services. SolarWinds gives larger insights when we run performance issues."

"It is a bit costly. The features are quite good, and I wouldn't say it requires any technical improvements. But from a cost perspective, some clients wouldn't go for Aurora because of that."

"It would have been helpful if they had provided some benchmarking numbers."

"The product's distributed query process for MySQL needs improvement."

"There are tuning challenges."

"I would like to see more AI-related features in future releases."

"Room for improvement might be in the UI, integrations, or data working capabilities for better user experience."

More Amazon Aurora cons

"I really would love to have a QT plugin."

"This solution is in need of more current tools."

"This product could be made easier to use for beginners."

"Every month or every second month, we find some bugs in it, which is not ideal."

"The solution really doesn't add new features very often."

"I would like to see backups from secondary servers."

"The support team could include local engineers to establish efficient communication. It will help us speed up the escalation process."

"Continue extending the SQL language for compatibility with the competition's language, including Stored Procedure Language."

More IBM Informix cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."

"The price could be lower compared to its competitors."

"The tool’s pricing depends on the instance type. For cost optimization purposes, we use the result instance category."

"It is quite expensive."

"There is no need to buy a license for the product. We can pay as per the use case."

"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

14%

Retailer

University

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	13

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	8

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Aurora?

Aurora's compatibility with MySQL or PostgreSQL benefited our database management. The migration from on-premise MySQL to Aurora was similar, so we didn't need to change our source code.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Aurora?

The pricing for Amazon Aurora is different from DocumentDB because DocumentDB is cheaper. However, when you manage the administration more closely, you can control costs better with Amazon Aurora. ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon Aurora?

I would like to see some tutorials from Amazon for Aurora because I'm too new to it. I believe Amazon can make more tutorials for the product since there's a lot of reading required, and a short tu...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Informix?

It supports multiple applications and business intelligence tools.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Informix?

The product has reasonable pricing. We purchase its yearly license.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Informix?

The key areas for improvement revolve around understanding the current customer trends and demands, particularly in software and database requirements. The product's performance could be better com...

See all answers

Comparisons

SQL Server vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 18% of the time

Oracle Database vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 13% of the time

MariaDB vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 8% of the time

CockroachDB vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 7% of the time

Citus Data vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 6% of the time

More Amazon Aurora Competitors

Oracle Database vs IBM Informix

Compared 35% of the time

SQL Server vs IBM Informix

Compared 26% of the time

IBM Db2 Database vs IBM Informix

Compared 14% of the time

Actian Ingres vs IBM Informix

Compared 8% of the time

MySQL vs IBM Informix

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM Informix Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora

October 2025

Download Amazon Aurora product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Informix

September 2025

Download IBM Informix product report

Also Known As

No data available

Informix

Overview

Amazon Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud, that combines the performance and availability of traditional enterprise databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases.

Amazon Aurora is up to five times faster than standard MySQL databases and three times faster than standard PostgreSQL databases. It provides the security, availability, and reliability of commercial databases at 1/10th the cost. Amazon Aurora is fully managed by Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), which automates time-consuming administration tasks like hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups.

Amazon Aurora features a distributed, fault-tolerant, self-healing storage system that auto-scales up to 64TB per database instance. It delivers high performance and availability with up to 15 low-latency read replicas, point-in-time recovery, continuous backup to Amazon S3, and replication across three Availability Zones (AZs).

Visit the Amazon RDS Management Console to create your first Aurora database instance and start migrating your MySQL and PostgreSQL databases.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

IBM Informix is a widely used and scalable relational database management system designed to handle large amounts of data and high transaction volumes. It is known to provide exceptional performance, thanks to its Parallel Data Query Engine (PDQ) that enables parallel processing of queries and operations, significantly reducing response times for complex queries and large data sets. Additionally, Informix supports online operations like backup, restore, index maintenance, and table reorganization, minimizing downtime and ensuring continuous availability.

Informix provides robust high availability and replication features, including shared-disk clustering, remote data replication, and high-availability data replication (HDR). These features ensure data redundancy, failover protection, and disaster recovery capabilities, making it a reliable choice for mission-critical applications. Furthermore, Informix offers specialized features for data warehousing and analytics, such as in-database analytics, data compression, and parallel load capabilities, making it suitable for business intelligence (BI) and data analysis applications.

Informix can be deployed as an embedded database, allowing it to be tightly integrated with applications and systems, reducing overhead and simplifying deployment. It includes workload management capabilities, enabling organizations to prioritize and manage different types of workloads, such as online transaction processing (OLTP) and analytical queries, ensuring efficient resource utilization and meeting service-level agreements (SLAs). Informix also provides robust security features, including role-based access control, data encryption, auditing, and compliance with industry standards like FIPS 140-2 and Common Criteria.

IBM

Sample Customers

Dow Jones, Arizona State University, Verizon, Capital One, United Nations, Nielsen, Autodesk, Fanduel

Shaspa, Hildebrand, Kaifa, Ranhill Powertron, Federaci‹ Farmacutica (FedeFarma), Camden Council, The German Aerospace Center (DLR), Myers, Votorantim Group, Doosan Infracore, GreenIvory

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora vs. IBM Informix

September 2025

Free Report: Amazon Aurora vs. IBM Informix

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