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Infobright DB vs SQL Server comparison

 

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

Infobright DB
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
33rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (19th)
SQL Server
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
274
Ranking in other categories
Database Management Systems (DBMS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Infobright DB is 1.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SQL Server is 10.7%, down from 17.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.7%
Infobright DB1.3%
Other88.0%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user104457 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Apr 14, 2014
 

Featured Reviews

it_user708987 - PeerSpot reviewer
MySQL DBA at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Excellent reporting server that is compatible with MySQL
We ran into some quirks that Infobright had. We interacted with Infobright's support and were able to resolve them. There still are issues with data replication - Infobright is currently for one server (unless you buy the Infobright appliance). This would mean that redundancy is something you need to implement yourself.
Peter Larsson - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Warehouse Lead at Resurs Bank AB (publ.)
Ledger and seamless integrations have strengthened trusted analytics and unified workloads
SQL Server's high availability and disaster recovery features work for supporting mission-critical applications, but there is much more to wish for. These features are not quite ready yet, although they do function. However, they could be significantly better. High availability and disaster recovery features should be improved in the next releases. I have noticed that everything could be improved or enhanced in the future, particularly temporal tables and window functions. Sometimes, I believe Microsoft releases features to stay ahead of competitors, but they do not make them feature-rich or feature-complete. They release something to be ahead of leaders and then seem to forget to maintain and upgrade them. I want Microsoft to pay more attention and be more mindful about the things they implement. It is fine to do a first release that works, but you cannot simply abandon it in the following years without service packs and improvements. You must continue to build on features rather than forgetting about them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Infobright gave us the ability to avoid significant changes in our data structure and just use Infobright like BigDataMySql."
"The high compression and the relatively fast load for a free product."
"It has very amazing smart grid query feature for very fast aggregate queries across millions of rows"
"A valuable feature was the use of a columnar database for large, ever-growing, big datasets."
"Infobright allowed us to reduce the number of moving parts and complexity that we had while providing good performance to produce our reports."
"It is very straightforward and easy to work with."
"ICE helped us improve the speed for the “group-by” query by 10x."
"We now have multiple times faster queries in comparison to MS SQL."
"If you need to, you can scale the solution very easily."
"Overall, it helps our organization a lot."
"It's a very good solution and I've been pretty happy with its capabilities."
"It's a good learning environment, it's easy enough to learn and understand. Anybody that picks up the language early on will be able to develop in it."
"There are a lot of great features: I like T-SQL, which is wonderful, the backups are excellent, many things are much easier to manage, I really enjoy all of the features and functions within the SQL language itself, the stored procedures, the security has been excellent, the initial setup is very straightforward, the stability is very good, and we find it easy to scale if we need to."
"It's easy to use and fairly intuitive. I do development and data analysis, so we do a lot of work with SSIS and SQL Job Scheduler. Deploying new databases is very simple with things like BACPAC."
"Stability and usability, which is quite simple, are two of the solution's most valuable features."
"You could have an offsite and an onsite, and if the onsite goes down, the offsite picks it up. I like that flexibility to provide continuing operations."
 

Cons

"Only the data from the columns that reached 2GB will actually decrease. Other columns below 2GB in size do not leave the disk."
"There still are issues with data replication - Infobright is currently for one server (unless you buy the Infobright appliance)."
"MPP, distributed processing!!! And better integration with Hadoop."
"On the contrary, we have switched back to the MS SSAS Tabular Model, because of pricing policy."
"We didn’t purchase the Enterprise Edition because it was too expensive for a product that wasn’t going to replace our main DWH database (Oracle), but was, somehow, only an addition for it."
"After all the re-work to our product to remove as much reliance on Infobright, and the extra hardware costs we had to absorb, there was definitely a negative return on investment."
"There was no scalability at all. Infobright didn't permit any changes in tables."
"When running a complex subquery, the system hangs without giving the user any response."
"If you are a new user then this solution could be difficult, they could improve by making the overall usage easier."
"Better integration with other platforms would be an improvement."
"Indexing, as well as integration, are areas of this product that need improvement."
"Something that could be improved is the cost because it's very high."
"There are certain shortcomings in the scalability of the product, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The setup cost is high, but it will return every penny."
"The remote access aspect needs to be improved in terms of security."
"You need to be careful if you have a very large amount of data, because the platform can be degraded if you're not on top of it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our pricing was based on server instances and it was actually very cheap compared to Oracle. I guess you get what you pay for."
"The free version is cumbersome to use and maintain. But $5000 for a licence is more expense than the benefit I would get from a licensed version. A licence might be worth the price to simplify management and speed up searches."
"We're looking at alternative solutions because we think Microsoft's licensing costs have been expensive."
"The price of SQL Server could be better in the African market. The licensing model needs to be improved, it is confusing."
"As compared to Oracle Database, SQL Server is less expensive. For mid-sized organizations, SQL Server is completely all right, but people say it can't support large organizations with more than 2,000 users."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a six out of ten. It is not extremely cheap but also it's not the most expensive product."
"​It has the easiest licensing."
"There is a license required for servers and for the POS we use the free version. The free version allows you to have tables and a total database size of approximately 10 GB, which is enough for our requirements."
"SQL Server's pricing has proven satisfactory for our market range."
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Answers from the Community

it_user104457 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Apr 14, 2014
Apr 14, 2014
Would be happy to discuss and help. I am only aware of InfoBright from what has been written publicly, however, MS SQL (and associated tools) I've used rather extensively.
2 out of 8 answers
it_user73359 - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Apr 10, 2014
Hi Pankaj, do I know you and from where?
it_user95526 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works with 10,001+ employees
Apr 10, 2014
Sorry but my skills are in the SAP space ..SQL server 2005 seems a very old version to compare to anything? Regards, Roger Loe Technology Principal Consultant SAP South Africa, 4 Waterford Place | Century City | Cape Town 7441 | South Africa
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
12%
University
9%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
40%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
4%
Comms Service Provider
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business119
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise118
 

Questions from the Community

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Would you say the price of SQL Server is high compared to that of similar products?
SQL Server is fairly priced because it has various editions, depending on the number of users, servers, or core packs you are using. If you compare the product to others in this category, the price...
Has using SQL Server helped your organization in any way?
SQL Server has helped my organization through partitioning to distribute the workload, as it splits them up into smaller pieces so the machines can easily deal with it. However, this comes with a h...
Which authentication mode is best for SQL Server?
My company connects through SQL Server authentication. We have company Windows accounts, but we do not want to connect the two, out of security concerns and to keep things separated for our own pur...
 

Also Known As

Infobright
Microsoft SQL Server, MSSQL, MS SQL
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

REZ-1, SonicWALL, IntegriChain, Fuseforward International Inc., Polystar, Live Rail, Mavenir Systems, JDSU Partners, Bango
Microsoft SQL Server is used by businesses in every industry, including Great Western Bank, Aviva, the Volvo Car Corporation, BMW, Samsung, Principality Building Society, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario.
Find out what your peers are saying about Infobright DB vs. SQL Server and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.