My primary use case for MySQL is with my products or websites for clients, and it helps me maintain relations with the best.
Backend developer at Alphatraduction
Dynamic workflows but lacks stability
Pros and Cons
- "The relations in the database, the dynamic workflow, and the ability to connect with all columns. It's useful for e-commerce."
- "I would rate the stability a seven out of ten. It does break down a little at times."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The relations in the database, the dynamic workflow, and the ability to connect with all columns. It's useful for e-commerce.
What needs improvement?
There is room for improvement in terms of the stability of the solution.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using MySQL for three years.
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate the stability a seven out of ten. It does break down a little at times.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup depends. For example, when working with e-commerce sites, it can be difficult to connect, and there may be failures. However, for other sites, it's easy.
What about the implementation team?
Our organization is using MySQL by having it hosted through a hosting provider.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is free. It is an open-source platform.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I would rate MySQL a six out of ten. I recommend MySQL for small organizations and companies. For bigger organizations, one may need to consider other options.
You can also consider your project, budget, and organization while opting for MySQL. If it's a government or private project and what the product is.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Data Solution Architect at Econet Wireless Zimbabwe
Great cluster setup; works fine on the technical side
Pros and Cons
- "The way that MySQL has improved my organization is that it comes free and also works fine on the technical side."
- "The integration with other systems can be improved as can the integration between other databases."
What is our primary use case?
Our primary use case for MySQL is for our internally-built system. When our developers are doing the assistance, usually we provision them with the MySQL driver.
How has it helped my organization?
The way that MySQL has improved my organization is that it comes free and also works fine on the technical side.
What is most valuable?
The feature I found most valuable was the cluster setup.
What needs improvement?
The integration with other systems can be improved as can the integration between other databases. We have a workaround to integrate it with other systems but that can be improved.
In the next release, I would like to see better day-to-day support in case we face any issues.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using MySQL since 2008.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate the stability of this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. We have a team of three DBAs supporting and maintaining this product.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would rate the scalability of this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. I believe MySQL very scalable.
How are customer service and support?
I would rate the technical support an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
I would rate the initial setup process a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. I would say that this process has been quite easy.
The deployment of this solution was done by an in-house team and it took around 30 minutes to one hour.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I would rate the pricing of this solution a two, on a scale from one to 10, with one being not expensive and 10 being very expensive.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend this solution to other people.
Overall, I would rate MySQL solution a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Buyer's Guide
MySQL
April 2026
Learn what your peers think about MySQL. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2026.
892,868 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Product Lifecycle Management Consultant at CPV industrial Solutions
Enhanced data handling and seamless integration for efficient project management
Pros and Cons
- "The ML modules in MySQL are advantageous since they make data handling easy and quick at MNQM."
- "MySQL has some unique exchange problems when it comes to migration projects."
What is our primary use case?
I have worked on migration projects between Power BI on Microsoft and SAP modules, which involve exchanging databases from Power BI on Microsoft to SAP modules.
Additionally, I have been involved in integration projects as a MySQL developer using Oracle SQL databases.
How has it helped my organization?
MySQL has facilitated the migration projects to SAP modules from Microsoft Power BI, easing database exchange. The integration is smoother and more efficient, which has been beneficial for handling various projects.
What is most valuable?
The ML modules in MySQL are advantageous since they make data handling easy and quick at MNQM. I have a lot of experience with QA test sections on MySQL, and it aids in connecting with third-party programs effortlessly due to its adaptation capabilities.
What needs improvement?
MySQL has some unique exchange problems when it comes to migration projects. The product could improve in terms of security, though not necessarily when compared to Azure. It can be improved in areas related to database exchange during migration projects.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have five years of experience with MySQL.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
MySQL is stable and continuously improves concerning databases. It is advantageous for projects in this area.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability in MySQL involves unique troubleshooting for every project that differs according to database exchanges. You can solve scalability issues easily if you possess strong SQL skills.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support from Oracle for MySQL is very good. They are really good at providing support.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have experience with Oracle SQL and have not used Microsoft SQL. MySQL and PostgreSQL are the tools I currently work with.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup for MySQL took about one and a half hours, and only one person was required for the installation.
What was our ROI?
Cost-saving is not a significant concern, but focusing on project details is crucial. The project details provide exchangeable areas that can lead to cost savings.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing for MySQL is slightly expensive, especially in unique projects for sectors like automotive and pharmaceuticals. Despite this, it is preferable for special projects due to its unique offerings.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have experience with Oracle SQL and PostgreSQL.
What other advice do I have?
I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Data Analyst at KPMG East Africa
Easy to manage, saves time, and provides good documentation
Pros and Cons
- "SKIP LOCKED is a valuable feature."
- "The full-text search feature must be improved."
What is our primary use case?
I use the solution for personal use cases like software development, mostly database bug systems.
How has it helped my organization?
I used the tool to build our website. It is used as a database to store information.
What is most valuable?
SKIP LOCKED is a valuable feature. It prevents us from deleting things we put in the database. It's mostly for background jobs in the software development site in MySQL 8. It is a new feature. The solution easily integrates with other tools and systems in our IT environment.
What needs improvement?
The full-text search feature must be improved.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for the past three weeks.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the tool’s stability an eight out of ten. We can create a database user schema. It's quite easy to update and remove in case anything happens. Backing up is quite easy. We have security features for the backup.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I’m the only user in my organization.
How are customer service and support?
The product provides good documentation online.
How was the initial setup?
It is easy to deploy the product. I deployed it on my own. The deployment took an hour. We deploy the product using Kamal. It uses Docker. The tool is deployed on the cloud. To deploy the solution, we just have to enter the password in the server and deploy it. It wasn't much of a hassle.
What was our ROI?
The tool is easy to manage and saves us time. It has much less complications.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We're using the community version. The tool is open source.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I also use PostgreSQL.
What other advice do I have?
The tool helps us get the job done. It is not very complex. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Project Manager at Unimity Solutions
The performance is optimal, the speed is very good, and there are no delays in fetching data
Pros and Cons
- "The speed is very good."
- "At times, the autoscaling does not happen when there is a surge in load."
What is our primary use case?
We use the tool in projects with customer records in the database. There will be a front-end application to search and find specific data from the tool. In another project, there are product listings, and the front end fetches data from the tool and shows it in a gallery or list view on the web page or mobile application.
How has it helped my organization?
We used MySQL in a project for a nonprofit museum. They have a lot of donors. They have a large repository of customers who give donations. They categorize the customers based on the money they give, such as steward level, platinum level, and diamond level. The client may send out an invite for an event for a certain group of customers, such as the patrons who donate the most. MySQL helped us in that project.
What is most valuable?
The optimized process is valuable. I have seen websites that take ages to load and show the data. Many web applications with lakhs and lakhs of data will take forever to show specific results. The database performance is optimal for the application we developed. The speed is very good. There were no delays in fetching data from the back end and showing it on the front end.
What needs improvement?
At times, the autoscaling does not happen when there is a surge in load. We had to depend on manual scaling. It led to website crashes in the past.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using the solution for projects running for the past five years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is one area in which we are very cost-sensitive. We always closely monitor the charges to increase the server scale. It will help us use more space in the DB if there is an economical way for us to pick up larger servers. We have more than six lakh end users.
How was the initial setup?
Most of our projects are on the cloud. A very small number are on the client's premises.
What was our ROI?
We are continuing to use the tool because it's been cost-effective. It's producing revenue for us. It's a beneficial solution.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The tool is open source. We choose open-source software mostly. We integrate a very limited number of licensed software.
What other advice do I have?
I have not seen any incident with a security violation or data breach. I have not contacted the technical support team. The infrastructure team contacts the technical support team regarding server-related issues. There is a LAMP stack. The Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP combination seems to be working well for enterprises' modern web applications.
Overall, the integration works well. However, initially, we worked with a third-party integration team to fix the APIs, query, and response code. Initially, some technical work will be needed. Once it is done, the integration turns seamless.
Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
CEO at Les Roches International School of Hotel Management
An easy and convenient solution with good performance
Pros and Cons
- "MySQL is easy and convenient for me. I don't need to rely on anyone. I can write the code and extract the information. It is fast if you know how to use it. The solution is not expensive, and most of the developers know how to use it. It is easy to create tables. The solution is stable and has good performance. The connection with AWS gives regular updates, which is manual otherwise and a nightmare."
- "The tool needs to improve table visualization."
What is most valuable?
MySQL is easy and convenient for me. I don't need to rely on anyone. I can write the code and extract the information. It is fast if you know how to use it. The solution is not expensive, and most of the developers know how to use it. It is easy to create tables. The solution is stable and has good performance. The connection with AWS gives regular updates, which is manual otherwise and a nightmare.
What needs improvement?
The tool needs to improve table visualization.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
MySQL is stable and fast.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The tool is scalable. Around 15-20 developers use the tool in my company.
How are customer service and support?
MySQL's technical support is good.
How was the initial setup?
The tool's installation is easy. You must download the app and log in using a password and username.
What other advice do I have?
I rate the product a ten out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Managing Director at NaMax Limited
A reliable, free, and easy-to-use solution
Pros and Cons
- "For starters, it's free, which is always nice, and it's also pretty straightforward to use. It's a nice conventional database."
- "The workbench could be improved. In particular, error messages can be improved, which are horrific and completely unhelpful. I'd like to see improved parsing of errors. When you write SQL and it crashes, it usually is something completely irrelevant and not helpful. I've started to use GPT 3.5 for finding out how to do things. I got to do something a bit different, and that I found to be very useful. If there was some way to tie it into one of the new AI tools, that would probably be a good idea."
What is our primary use case?
Mostly, we're using it as a database behind a machine learning application.
What is most valuable?
For starters, it's free, which is always nice, and it's also pretty straightforward to use. It's a nice conventional database. We don't need the sort of flexibility that you get with most SQL databases and stuff like that, so we are happy with a good old-fashioned relational database. It's totally good for that.
It works. It's reliable. We haven't done any configuration management for probably about two years, but as far as I remember, that was pretty straightforward as well. It's doing what it needs to do as far as we're concerned.
What needs improvement?
The workbench could be improved. In particular, error messages can be improved, which are horrific and completely unhelpful. I'd like to see improved parsing of errors. When you write SQL and it crashes, it usually is something completely irrelevant and not helpful. I've started to use GPT 3.5 for finding out how to do things. I got to do something a bit different, and that I found to be very useful. If there was some way to tie it into one of the new AI tools, that would probably be a good idea. There were a couple of things that I've found difficult to do in the past, and I remember they were fiddly. I set them into ChatGPT, which is GPT 3.5, and it gave first-class answers.
I find it clunky. It just doesn't feel very modern. It feels as if you have to go through multiple steps to get to places, and it's not clear, but operationally, I find it fine.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution for about five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's reliable. I never lost any data, which you anyways shouldn't. I'd rate it a ten out of ten in terms of stability because we never had the slightest problem. We are not in a challenging environment, but I haven't had any problems.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We've had absolutely no limitations. However, we haven't got enormous data. It's not very vast, so scalability hasn't been an issue. At our level, it's not even a question. It's absolutely perfect. I'd rate it an eight out of ten in terms of scalability, which I describe as very good
How are customer service and support?
I've never contacted them, but technical support within the environment itself isn't good. I'd rate it a three out of ten, but now if I can use my own technical support with GPT 3.5, it comes up to about an eight out of ten. It's a kind of hybrid support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We weren't using a similar solution previously. We would prototype from things like Excel or straight-off .TXT files. I had some experience and so did my business partner, and we just decided this looked like the right answer.
How was the initial setup?
That was pretty straightforward as I remember. It was a while ago now, but I don't remember any difficulties at all. I'd rate it a nine out of ten in terms of the ease of setup.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It's free.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did look at MongoDB, but it wasn't what we needed, so we decided we go with something a little more conventionally established, and MySQL absolutely fitted the bill. We didn't need anything else. We got some colleagues who used Oracle, but it's expensive and quite difficult to use.
What other advice do I have?
If you don't have any unusual requirements or absolutely vast databases, it's ideal. We certainly have no problems at all. It just works.
Overall, I'd rate it a nine out of ten. Nothing is perfect, but it's as good as we could have asked for.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
CEO at Shiraz University
Can work on both Windows and Linux and has a supportive community
Pros and Cons
- "MySQL is an open-source product and has good community support. If you encounter any problem, you can easily ask other members of the community to help. They help you a lot. On top of being free, MySQL is a cross-platform database, meaning it can work on both Windows and Linux. It is very good for us."
- "I would like to see the automatic backup feature in the solution as well. Data is very important and we need to preserve it in a safe place. It would be good if MySQL can back up the data automatically."
What is our primary use case?
The solution is a database server. You can use it for desktop or web applications. The tool is used mostly for web applications. Most websites have MySQL databases behind them.
What is most valuable?
MySQL is an open-source product and has good community support. If you encounter any problem, you can easily ask other members of the community to help. They help you a lot. On top of being free, MySQL is a cross-platform database, meaning it can work on both Windows and Linux. It is very good for us.
What needs improvement?
The solution’s stored procedure is too light. MS SQL server supports stored procedures which MySQL doesn’t. Oracle and MS SQL servers support treiber which notifies you about data changes in the database. MySQL doesn’t support treiber.
I would like to see the automatic backup feature in the solution as well. Data is very important and we need to preserve it in a safe place. It would be good if MySQL can back up the data automatically.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using MySQL for ten years. I use the solution’s latest version.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I haven’t seen any problems with the solution’s stability and I would rate the stability a ten on ten. It is a very stable tool.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would rate the solution’s scalability a ten on ten. The tool is network-based and the scalability depends on the design of your project. You can use the product of both large and small-scale projects.
We are not a very large organization. There are around ten developers who use MS SQL server and MySQL for databases.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We are simultaneously using the MS SQL server and MySQL server. We first used MS SQL server and then in some projects, we required free and open-source databases. We use MySQL for those projects.
How was the initial setup?
The installation was very easy and straightforward. The setup took around a couple of minutes which was five to six minutes to complete. The tool’s installation was really fast.
What about the implementation team?
We didn’t require any assistance from third parties.
What was our ROI?
My company must have seen some benefit with the solution’s use.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate the overall solution a nine out of ten. We didn’t find any issues in the solution’s maintenance. In every project, one developer would be in charge of their respective database maintenance. The solution has large community support.
MySQL is a fast database that is also high performing. When you want to do a project that requires a fast transaction, MySQL acts very well there. When a company needs a free database that is fast, could be connected over the network with many people, and do transactions, we usually suggest this solution.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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