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Azure SQL Managed Instance vs SkySQL comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Azure SQL Managed Instance
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (30th)
SkySQL
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

FataiAkinwande - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief IT Consultant at d3astech
Managed database service has simplified hybrid integration and strengthened automated backups
The only red flag I could point out is you don't have 100% control of your data. You don't have 100% control of that particular server because it is Microsoft that has access to it. For instance, if you are working with a government organization that doesn't want their data to be resided outside the country, it will not work. You cannot use it because there's no way the data is going to be resided somewhere outside a particular country. Let's say for instance, I'm having an engagement with a Lagos state government with a particular product that need to be deployed and then I can never propose such kind of environment for them because Lagos state will never allow their data to be resided elsewhere except within their data center. In that case, you can't use it. Technology evolves every day and then as technology moves, I move as well. Currently, with what I'm seeing on Azure SQL Managed Instance, it's somewhat perfect, but they still need to do more. But if I'm going to probably figure out what could be the added features within the environment, maybe probably the SA admin should be released to the users within the SQL infrastructure team, SQL team, that is the database team members. Because currently, nobody has access to the SQL admin. The SA admin is one of the greatest accounts. Although Microsoft put a provision for that, your Active Directory account can perform the same function that SA admin can do, because you're not running the SQL within your own VM or physical server. Microsoft controls that. Aside from that, because to me, I don't even see it as a problem because there's a provision for that. In the absence of that SA admin, your Active Directory account can be probably elevated to perform the same function. I don't see anything that's probably against it.
Shubham-Agarwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager - Projects at Cognizant
Cloud database has reduced infrastructure effort and now lets us focus on clean transactional data
Currently, we have not identified significant improvement areas for SkySQL. However, enhanced AI functionality would be beneficial. We use AI in Snowflake but not in SkySQL. If SkySQL could write SQL queries automatically using AI or improve SQL query performance, this would be valuable for future use cases.When comparing SkySQL to other databases such as Databricks and Snowflake, these platforms offer more AI-related functionality and data lineage capabilities, allowing visibility of the complete data journey from source to target. SkySQL currently lacks data lineage functionality. Since we transform data using stored procedures and views, implementing data lineage functionality would help us track the complete journey of data from source through all intermediate transformation steps to the final layer. I rate SkySQL an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I can tell you categorically that the ROI, the return on investment is very, very high and it's very commendable."
"Security-wise, Azure SQL Managed Instance is absolutely robust, and governance-wise, the manageability of Azure SQL Managed Instance is very good."
"Compared with all of these options, we concluded that SkySQL is one of the best solutions addressing those criteria."
"SkySQL is easy to use and has reliable performance, offering scalability and fast execution."
"In my experience, the best feature that SkySQL offers is a fully managed database service which reduces operational overhead, along with its high availability and automatic failover for business-critical applications, and its scalability to handle growing data volumes and overloads, plus automated backups and disaster recovery capabilities."
"We never face performance issues, and backup and scalability are all managed automatically, which has significantly improved our SLA."
 

Cons

"The only red flag I could point out is you don't have 100% control of your data. You don't have 100% control of that particular server because it is Microsoft that has access to it."
"Azure SQL Managed Instance can be improved by adding more scalability options."
"I believe one area for improvement would be more advanced monitoring and reporting features."
"It is still early in our evaluation of SkySQL, so we do not have major concerns, but if anything, we would like to see even better documentation, onboarding guidance, and monitoring capabilities to make adoption and ongoing management easier."
"When comparing SkySQL to other databases such as Databricks and Snowflake, these platforms offer more AI-related functionality and data lineage capabilities, allowing visibility of the complete data journey from source to target."
"More end-to-end deployment guides, additional reference architectures, dashboards, and more proactive performance tuning recommendations would make the platform even easier to adapt and manage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Insurance Company
32%
Construction Company
31%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Transportation Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Azure SQL Managed Instance?
Azure SQL Managed Instance can be improved by adding more scalability options. I need to have more flexibility in terms of scalability with Azure SQL Managed Instance. In sizing, I need some option...
What is your primary use case for Azure SQL Managed Instance?
My main use case for Azure SQL Managed Instance is for storing information related to insurance and claims in the staging database to avoid using Dataverse because it is more expensive. I use Azure...
What advice do you have for others considering Azure SQL Managed Instance?
My advice for others looking into using Azure SQL Managed Instance is that if they have some SaaS applications such as Dataverse or any other SaaS applications like BPM or ServiceNow, wherein their...
What needs improvement with SkySQL?
Currently, we have not identified significant improvement areas for SkySQL. However, enhanced AI functionality would be beneficial. We use AI in Snowflake but not in SkySQL. If SkySQL could write S...
What is your primary use case for SkySQL?
SkySQL serves as our transactional layer where we store metadata for all our applications before moving data into our Snowflake database. We receive transactional data from various applications, st...
What advice do you have for others considering SkySQL?
Reducing our team size has significantly affected efficiency and costs for our organization. This cost efficiency benefit resulted from replacing two infrastructure team members since the infrastru...
 

Comparisons

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Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), MongoDB and others in Database as a Service (DBaaS). Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.