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IBM Informix vs MariaDB comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

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

IBM Informix
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
26th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Embedded Database (10th)
MariaDB
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Open Source Databases (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Informix is 1.8%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MariaDB is 3.3%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
MariaDB3.3%
IBM Informix1.8%
Other94.9%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Nasir Niamat - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
AB
Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd
Has supported web application data needs but requires design adjustments to manage complex queries efficiently
Complex queries in MariaDB where the query needs to parse thousands of lines or data values face some performance issues. For small and medium-size volume, it is pretty good. If it goes beyond certain data and complex queries, we see performance issues. We tried the advanced replication feature between different regions, replicating data specifically residing on MariaDB to two different regions of MariaDB data, and there were some technical snags in terms of slowness and longer processing time. Point-in-time recovery in MariaDB is good for small databases. When data volume increases beyond 5 GB or 10 GB per day or runs into double-digit GBs, we found some performance issues. For data below 10 GB, it works fine. Performance is the primary focus area for MariaDB, particularly during transactions or complex query jobs where slow performance is observed. MariaDB is scalable and easy to scale.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Informix can support huge quantities of data with less memory and less capacity."
"So far, we do not have a lot of issues. It's pretty problem-free."
"My advice is to take it; you will never regret it."
"It is very easy to install IBM Informix, very easy to scale, and support is quite better."
"This solution has made financial reporting possible by allowing financial people the opportunity to set Informix to "Auto Pilot" so that they can attend other duties."
"Replication, all levels of replication, query charting, and the MongoDB embedded are the most valuable features of this solution."
"Flexible Grid provides the ability to automatically create database objects, such as tables, indexes, and stored procedures on all nodes within the grid as a single operation."
"Overall, this is a great product. It works really well, is very stable, and is very scalable."
"I like the global transaction IDs (GTIDs) feature. It's quite reliable for replication between a master and a replica server, and it's a feature that MySQL also has but implemented differently."
"MariaDB has positively impacted our organization in terms of reliability; it has been incredibly stable, and from an operational standpoint, it has drastically improved our deployment workflows since we can run the exact same MariaDB community version locally in Docker containers as we do on our staging and production servers."
"From the user's perspective, the performance of the columnar queries is very good in terms of the database when comparing it to the Oracle, and MySQL."
"The initial setup of MariaDB is simple enough."
"The solution is easy to set up and the implementation is very quick."
"The product has been stable and reliable."
"MariaDB is stable and the initial setup is straightforward."
"The solution's features have effectively met our operational requirements as a standard SQL database."
 

Cons

"The support team could include local engineers to establish efficient communication. It will help us speed up the escalation process."
"There should be more intelligence surrounding discovering data to be able to automatically create indexes."
"The solution should offer replication. It would be helpful if the solution would allow us to access third-party tools."
"It would be helpful to have IBM salespeople know that Informix exists, and sell it. Currently, it is completely ignored by IBM."
"Every month or every second month, we find some bugs in it, which is not ideal."
"The technical support services need substantial improvement."
"I really would love to have a QT plugin."
"This product could be made easier to use for beginners."
"MariaDB could improve by adding support for non-relational structures and new data types."
"Data continuity could be improved."
"It should work across all fields like SQLite, as it is the basis of any application, even apps for phones and the like."
"In future releases, mainly the addition of security features would be beneficial for MariaDB."
"The price could be less expensive."
"It's not very stable. It needs improvement."
"It would be good if they can maybe improve the mass import in the database."
"Replication could be better, and it's not so simple. It would be better if they had a replication server. It would make things a lot easier. You need to have that replication server, but not in the same server farm. Then there will be a bit of latency between both because you should have one in one city and another one in a different city. That kind of solution should be more baked into every single database today. Mirroring the database in a live environment where any record written on the production server replicates instantly across the fiber on the other server wasn't easy. Many people don't even bother with that, and they just run one server."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"For me, it's always too expensive."
"The product has reasonable pricing. We purchase its yearly license."
"I am not aware of the licensing costs or terms."
"I rate the product's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price, and ten is high price since there are some support costs involved, even though it isn't an open-source solution."
"MariaDB is open-source and self-hosted."
"It is an open-source solution."
"The licensing cost is approximately $4000.00 per year and the licensing is based on the software and the number of posts that you make."
"The price of this solution represents a very good compromise between the cost and what it offers."
"My company uses the free version of the solution."
"We pay for a yearly license."
"It is free of charge."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise26
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Informix?
There is a cost reason to move from IBM Informix. It is relatively cheaper than Oracle. The second reason is that moving the whole application to a new database would require significant cost. The ...
What needs improvement with IBM Informix?
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 f...
What is your primary use case for IBM Informix?
We are using IBM Informix for OLTP systems. We are using IBM Informix although it is a technology that is not very popular compared to others. We are using it because our application was initially ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MariaDB?
MariaDB is in the pricey range, especially for huge databases handling terabytes of data. The cost depends on the volume of data and different features enabled during configuration, such as backup ...
What needs improvement with MariaDB?
The key area where MariaDB could be improved is its native GUI tooling; while the command-line interface works perfectly fine, the built-in visual tools for administration, management, and query de...
What is your primary use case for MariaDB?
My main use case for MariaDB was web applications, and I have been using MariaDB for just about a year now as I was in the development team. A specific web application where I used MariaDB is a hea...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Informix
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Shaspa, Hildebrand, Kaifa, Ranhill Powertron, Federaci‹ Farmacutica (FedeFarma), Camden Council, The German Aerospace Center (DLR), Myers, Votorantim Group, Doosan Infracore, GreenIvory
Google, Wikipedia, Tencent, Verizon, DBS Bank, Deutsche Bank, Telefónica, Huatai Securities
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Informix vs. MariaDB and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.