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IBM Informix vs Teradata comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 5, 2026

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
25th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Embedded Database (9th)
Teradata
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (5th), Backup and Recovery (15th), Data Integration (14th), Data Warehouse (3rd), BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th), Marketing Management (4th), Cloud Data Warehouse (2nd), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 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 Teradata is 4.0%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Teradata4.0%
IBM Informix1.8%
Other94.2%
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.
David Durand Velásquez - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineers at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Delivers consistent performance and enables advanced analytics across complex data environments
Teradata stands out as a solid platform for managing and analyzing large volumes of data. Its architecture allows information to be processed efficiently while maintaining stable performance, even in highly demanding environments. One of its most notable strengths is the ability to run complex queries at high speed, which is essential for organizations that require timely and reliable analytics. Teradata offers a well-integrated ecosystem that supports working with different types of data and enables scalability as organizational needs grow. Its focus on advanced analytics, integration with modern business intelligence tools, and the ability to operate both on-premise and in the cloud make it a versatile solution for data warehousing and large-scale processing. Teradata's stability, technological maturity, and the availability of strong documentation and best practices are noteworthy. I consider Teradata to be a tool with great potential for any organization looking to enhance its analytical capabilities, optimize data processing, and move toward more data-driven decision-making. Teradata stands out as a solid platform for managing a large volume of data in different projects. Its architecture allows information to be processed efficiently while maintaining stable performance, even in high-demanding environments. A well-integrated AI ecosystem that supports working with different types of data and enables scalability as organizational needs grow across different kinds of enterprises or organizations. The focus on advanced analytics integration with modern business intelligence tools is particularly valuable. Teradata combines a powerful parallel process and optimizing SQL engine with a highly scalable architecture allowing businesses to execute complex queries and analytics in real-time. It supports multi-cloud, hybrid, and on-premise environments, giving organizations flexibility to choose the setup that best aligns with their strategy. One of the biggest strengths is the ability to unify disparate data sources and support high concurrency, enabling different teams, such as analytics, operations, BI, and data science, to access consistent, trusted data across the enterprise.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"The scalability is very good."
"Informix can support huge quantities of data with less memory and less capacity."
"It supports in-house-built applications in .NET and VB6"
"The stability is incredible. I have customers with uptimes of several years."
"OLTP processing capacity and the availability of information with high availability implementation have been significantly improved."
"Replication is a valuable feature and easy to use."
"It's simple to use and scalable."
"Teradata can be deployed on-premise, on the cloud, or in a virtual machine, which means customers can move without having to create their architecture all over again."
"It has increased the speed of reporting."
"Teradata can be easily used in ETL mode transformations, so there is no need for expensive and inconvenient ETL tools"
"Teradata combines a powerful parallel process and optimizing SQL engine with a highly scalable architecture allowing businesses to execute complex queries and analytics in real-time."
"Teradata is a great, industry-leading data warehousing product that has MPP architecture."
"There are two very useful features: one is the fast data input for more or less any online data, and two, it also has a lot of tools for data engineering or data manipulation that are compatible."
"Our customers are very impressed by Teradata's speed, because it's massively parallel processed."
 

Cons

"This product could be made easier to use for beginners."
"In my opinion, the packages could be improved. The version I use doesn't allow for packages. I can do some general procedures, but no packages like in Oracle. So, develop separate modules in SQL language. This would be most beneficial for me."
"The solution really doesn't add new features very often. Other solutions are much more actively pushing out upgrades and improvements."
"The product needs a lot more marketing involvement from IBM."
"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."
"The pricing is a bit expensive."
"There should be more intelligence surrounding discovering data to be able to automatically create indexes."
"I would like to see more integration with many different types of data."
"Teradata needs to expand the kind of training that's available to customers. Teradata only offers training directly and doesn't delegate to any third-party companies. As a result, it's harder to find people trained on Teradata in our market relative to Oracle."
"It needs a teaching web site with more training on third-party tools used for BI."
"The setup is not straightforward."
"The solution could improve by having a cloud version or a cloud component. We have to use other solutions, such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Snowflake for the cloud."
"Teradata hardly supports unstructured data or semi-structured data"
"There are a few things where you are totally dependent on the customer service and support from Teradata. This is an area where they really need to improve a bit, especially when you're talking about cloud service integration."
"It would help to make scaling easier with a reduced cost. ​"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"In this day and age, we want to get things done quickly. So, we go to the AWS Marketplace."
"Teradata is not cheap, but you get what you pay for."
"The cost is substantial, totaling around $1.2 million, solely dedicated to upgrading the hardware."
"Make sure you have the in-house skills to design and support the solution, as relying on external sources is extremely costly and tends to lock you into specific platforms, tools, and paradigms."
"Price is quite high, so if it is really possible to use other solutions (e.g. you do not have strict requirements for performance and huge data volumes), it might be better to look at alternatives from the RDBMS world."
"​I would advise others to look into migration and setup as a fixed price and incorporate a SaaS option for other Teradata services​."
"Teradata is expensive, so it's typically marketed to big customers. However, there have been some changes, and Teradata is now offering more flexible pricing models and equipment leasing. They've added pay-as-you-go and cloud models, so it's changing, but Teradata is generally known as an expensive high-end product."
"I am using the free version of Teradata."
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Comparison Review

it_user232068 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Aug 5, 2015
Netezza vs. Teradata
Original published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/should-i-choose-net Two leading Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) architectures for Data Warehousing (DW) are IBM PureData System for Analytics (formerly Netezza) and Teradata. I thought talking about the similarities and differences…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

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 Enterprise13
Large Enterprise53
 

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 ...
Comparing Teradata and Oracle Database, which product do you think is better and why?
I have spoken to my colleagues about this comparison and in our collective opinion, the reason why some people may declare Teradata better than Oracle is the pricing. Both solutions are quite simi...
Which companies use Teradata and who is it most suitable for?
Before my organization implemented this solution, we researched which big brands were using Teradata, so we knew if it would be compatible with our field. According to the product's site, the comp...
Is Teradata a difficult solution to work with?
Teradata is not a difficult product to work with, especially since they offer you technical support at all levels if you just ask. There are some features that may cause difficulties - for example,...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Informix
IntelliFlex, Aster Data Map Reduce, , QueryGrid, Customer Interaction Manager, Digital Marketing Center, Data Mover, Data Stream Architecture, Teradata Vantage Enterprise (DIY)
 

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
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Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Informix vs. Teradata and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.