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 #17 with an average rating of 8.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 2.9% 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

2,027 Views
1,986 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Informix

Read 16 IBM Informix reviews

1,279 Views
1,253 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: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora vs. IBM Informix

July 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

17th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Embedded Database (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon Aurora is 2.9%, down from 4.1% 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

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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Nazzareno Maria Rezzini

Senior Oracle Database and Systems Administrator at Dedagroup

Supports multiple business intelligence tools, but the technical support services need improvement

IBM Informix is a central database solution across various environments, supporting multiple applications and business intelligence tools The key areas for improvement revolve around understanding the current customer trends and demands, particularly in software and database requirements. The…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We had better control over the parameters that we could tweak in terms of intermediate storage and better indexing capabilities."

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

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

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

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

"Aurora is a key pillar for us, offering performance and availability."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to do multiple-read and single-write. These are the kinds of features that we were interested in, and Aurora takes care of that natively."

"The most valuable feature of Amazon Aurora is SQL standardization, it doesn't have its own syntax which is good. It has a lot of hands-off self-management type of activities, such as log rolling and auto-scaling."

More Amazon Aurora pros

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

"The initial setup is pretty easy."

"The solution's stability, performance, enhanced functionality, and replication are all great features."

"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."

"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."

"It supports multiple applications and business intelligence tools."

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

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

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."

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

"The pricing could improve. It should be reduced."

"There is improvement needed to have more developer focus. Additionally, it would be helpful to have a stand-alone solution outside of Amazon. Amazon has a tendency to favor developing web-based clients, which may not always provide the fastest or most responsive solution as desired."

"One of the most valuable features is storage scaling."

"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."

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

More Amazon Aurora cons

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

"The solution lacks some functionality."

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

"The technical support services need substantial improvement."

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

"It would be helpful to have IBM salespeople know that Informix exists, and sell it. Currently, it is completely ignored by IBM."

"I experienced poor input/output (IO) performance."

"There should be more intelligence surrounding discovering data to be able to automatically create indexes."

More IBM Informix cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"It is quite expensive."

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

"It is an expensive solution."

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

"For me, it's always too expensive."

"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."

"I am not aware of the licensing costs or terms."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

25%

Computer Software Company

16%

Retailer

Government

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 24% of the time

Oracle Database vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 15% of the time

MariaDB vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 8% of the time

Citus Data vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 7% of the time

YugabyteDB vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 6% of the time

More Amazon Aurora Competitors

Oracle Database vs IBM Informix

Compared 33% of the time

SQL Server vs IBM Informix

Compared 29% of the time

IBM Db2 Database vs IBM Informix

Compared 13% of the time

MySQL vs IBM Informix

Compared 9% of the time

MariaDB vs IBM Informix

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM Informix Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora

August 2025

Download Amazon Aurora product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Informix

August 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

July 2025

Free Report: Amazon Aurora vs. IBM Informix

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