JSON support, especially the new JSONB data type is valuable . We used to have a mix of PostgreSQL and MongoDB to solve some of the complex problem around data schemas, now, we rely solely on PostgreSQL as our main datastore. Same flexibility with rock solid performance.
TIBCO Middleware Architect & System Administrator at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It allows us to focus on innovation rather than licensing costs.
What is most valuable?
How has it helped my organization?
PostgreSQL has been a key component of our business, it is a rock solid product with years of expertise behind it, it is more cost-effective than Oracle and allows us to focus on innovation rather than licensing costs.
What needs improvement?
JSON support although great, it still has some gotchas, querying and manipulating JSON will be one of the topics I'd like to see some improvement, still feels not natural to work with it.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using it for around four years.
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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
There have been no issues with the deployment.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We haven't had any issues with the stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We haven´t hit the point yet when scalability is a problem, but it would be nice if horizontal scalability comes out of the box
How are customer service and support?
So far the community has been great with us, every time we have a question or not sure what is the best way to tackle a problem, we have encountered someone that is able to share his knowledge with us.
How was the initial setup?
It was pretty straightforward, initially our setup was not complex on purpose, we were looking for a simple yet reliable setup, that allows us to gain expertise before moving to a more complex one.
What about the implementation team?
All in-house. My advice is to try to keep things simple, it is harder to learn from complex setups where the setup itself is a problem too, work on complexity once you feel comfortable with the expertise you have gained.
What was our ROI?
In our case, our ROI is very high, we do not pay for licensing, we use the community version of PostgreSQL and sometimes use companies that provide a hosted PostgreSQL.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated Oracle, MongoDB and CouchBase. Although those seem to be different products, they have some common features that worked for us, we decided to go with PostgreSQL because of its reliability and proven track record.
What other advice do I have?
PostgreSQL is a great product, very mature and is evolving into other areas beyond SQL, in this times of connected devices and big data analytics, PostgreSQL can still be considered one of the key components and works very well with others. Being reliable is still one of the best ways to get a good ROI.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Sr. Database Architect at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
The full text search functionality helped a quite a number of times to avoid introducing another system for text search.
What is most valuable?
PostgreSQL is the only open source and multi-functional database solution out in the market today. I have used it to replace Oracle (RDBMS) up to MongoDB (Document DB). Postgres has very rich SQL and NoSQL features that gives it a special place in database industry. It’s easy configure and manage features helped to increase adoption in last decade or so.
How has it helped my organization?
PostgreSQL is the most flexible database I have worked in my career. For example, when I need geographical data processing for my application, I can use PostGIS. It is the best GIS solution out in the market, by installing extension the extension onto the database. Additionally, PostgreSQL's full text search functionality helped a quite a number of times to avoid introducing another system for text search and use PostgreSQL.
What needs improvement?
PostgreSQL has introduced number of new features to achieve out of the box multi-master replication and reach JSONB features, horizontal and vertical scalability and parallelization features. I’d like to see them to be production ready. As the number of users of application grows, the multi-master replication will helpful to replicate systems across the continents. We have started using JSONB in number of application, I would like to see some extended features to make JSONB data type more reachable. The horizontal/vertical scalability & parallelization features will help our big data analytics processes faster to improve application response time.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used it for approximately 10 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have experience working with over dozen of database and datastores in production environments but PostgreSQL has been the most stable database I have worked so far.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is missing some key scalability features such as sharding and automatic failover, but the Postgres developers are working on adding these features.
How are customer service and technical support?
Postgres community is very thriving and Postgres ecosystem is very strong. The product is open source but it has the best documentation and readable code among other open source products. The turnaround time for logged bug is much faster than some of the commercial vendor’s support team. Additionally, there are a number of PostgreSQL professional support companies in the US and all over world.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I used to be an Oracle DBA over decade ago. I have used over dozen of database solutions ranging from MySQL to MongoDB in the distributed production environments but Postgres provides superior features but not limited to; extendibility, performance, scalability, analytics queries.
How was the initial setup?
PostgreSQL is easy to setup compare to any other commercial RDBMS out there in market. It is easy to install and configure.
What about the implementation team?
Postgres has great documentation and various open source tools available for maintenance. However, it is recommended to work with Postgres consulting services companies to expedite design and implementation.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
PostgreSQL is truly open source database system so the licensing cost is zero. If you are migrating from any commercial database system, you are saving licensing and recurring support costs.
What other advice do I have?
If you don’t have experience with PostgreSQL, I recommend to attend some of the local PostgreSQL user group meetups and/or conferences to learn how it is being used. If you need help discussing about the solution, you can reach to any of the Postgres consulting services company.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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PostgreSQL
May 2025

Learn what your peers think about PostgreSQL. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.
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Staff System Admin at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
From our use of it, its stability and performance are the best features. The fact that there's no downtime and that it functions quickly are very important to our workflow and business.
What is most valuable?
From our use of it, its stability and performance are the best features. The fact that there's no downtime and that it functions quickly are very important to our workflow and business.
How has it helped my organization?
We're in the evaluation period at my current company, so we haven't really seen improvement to our functioning.
What needs improvement?
The multi-master replication feature needs improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used it for eight years now.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
We've had issues with deployment, but I can't share the details.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We've had issues with stability, but I can't share the details.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We've had issues with scalability, but I can't share the details.
How are customer service and technical support?
We are running the open source version and haven't purchased technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Yes, we evaluated other solutions, and we are moving away from PostgreSQL after the evaluation period.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
The implementation was done with our in-house team. My advice is to get training.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Senior Software Engineer, Technical Lead at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
It comes with a very rich set of server side programming tools
What is most valuable?
PostgreSQL, especially the latest versions, comes with a very rich set of server side programming tools, while providing speed, data consistency and the transaction's coherence.
This is a very wide answer, but this large environment is providing fast solutions to various needs and I see this the main power.
How has it helped my organization?
I have a quick example about how it reduced the amount of backend code and also improved the application's performance. When you are in a scenario where your application has an input, and based on that, you have to do several back and forth exchanges with the database to get more information or do data changes, you can do that transactionally by using a stored procedure.
Some may say that this puts logic in the database, and yes it does, but it's the most efficient way to get the right output. By exploiting the PL/PgSQL capabilities it can be done and maintained more efficiently than usual backend code.
Another reason for improvement is that PL/PgSQL is a type safe language and this reduces considerably the amount of errors and even the functional flow of the application. Stored procedures are transactional, so either everything goes well, or an error happens.
What needs improvement?
Starting with v9 it can be seen an intensive activity to bring more features, more performance or productivity. I would like to see it be more reliable, and easier if possible, to make PostgreSQL clusters - more machines working together as a single instance .Providing an autonomous solution to share data across machines or replicate when it's needed. I would like to see horizontal scaling, up and down, made easier, and if something happens (I've rarely encounter cases after version 8), easier recovery from database general failure.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using PostgreSQL from v7.2 through v9.4, over more than decade. I have deployed it on both Linux and Windows machines.
My first interaction was in October 2002 and since then I've continued to use it for various applications or services, varying from a few tens of thousands of records per table to hundreds of millions and more complex deployments.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
The source for Linux machines were usually ("usually" because in the beginning you had to compile certain versions yourself, especially for custom setups) the operating system's repositories and for Windows the packages prepared on the official PostgreSQL website.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I've experienced stability issues on versions 7 and 8, but setup properly none (in my case) on version 9.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Database mirroring was very impressive five to seven years ago, and since then many things have changed. At that time, horizontal scalability wasn't mature enough and we preferred to manage multiple instances independently, something that is going on today. One of my next projects is to test the limits of todays solutions for PostgreSQL clusters.
How are customer service and technical support?
First of all I think PostgreSQL's documentation is very rich (still missing more complex examples or aspects) and provides a lot of answers. Then you may find a large community and forums. And more professional people able to help.
I've always followed this path before calling a certain customer service or support, of course with the cost of investing a lot of personal time to understand things and apply measures. But this was a personal curiosity and pleasure.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I've used a larger set of databases (including the most well-known and a few more exotic) and setups. Definitively PostgreSQL is a serious contender at the top of the list. I chose it because it's fast, reliable, rich in functionality, and it has no commercial costs for its acquisition.
How was the initial setup?
Starting a simple database is straightforward, but when it comes to set up, machines for heavy duty operations, read or write, there is a consistent learning curve to take into consideration.
PostgreSQL is a complex database, but once your start mastering its features you discover that things work.
What about the implementation team?
I have always implemented in-house and sometimes I've looked around for vendor sources just to understand with what they come more.
Definitiely they help reduce the learning curve and there are promises for richer scalability options.
What was our ROI?
In the cases I've seen ROI was very good and it touched visible aspects from reduced ETA of developed applications, to better performance, easier maintenance and faster support.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The investment was in proper hardware and learning curve to master the database. Charging for expertise to deploy PostgreSQL depends on the expected setup, but in all cases, my choice would be to include a database specialist as early as possible within the development team.
The reason is that pure developers tend to rely on database power, making poorly optimized queries or choosing bad structures that explode later. The data warehouse team then have to clean it up, causing a loss for everyone.
What other advice do I have?
This is a very good product, and I'm very pleased, especially with the latest versions. I haven't found the perfect database yet, but definitively PostgreSQL is a candidate to consider, especially if you take into account that comes for free and is open source.
I had many debates about PostgreSQL and I've never seen yet someone getting to know it and complaining about it. It simply helps and works, but you have to be good at it. Going for commercial solutions might bring serious costs and a feeling of confidence, but this database is not only for try or start, it's reliable and well done.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Digital Development Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Simple installation and it does not consume a lot of resources.
Valuable Features:
- It's open source product not need to license, so economic
- It provides a graphical interface (pgAdmin) simple, intuitive and efficient
- Simple installation
- It does not consume a lot of resources
- Really suitable for business n-tier solutions
- Rich documentation
- An interactive community
Improvements to My Organization:
The strength of this product is set in the timeliness of SELECT queries with lots of joins. compared with other DBMS, it is really optimized for joins.
Room for Improvement:
I think that due to the lack of functionality for data warehousing, it is more suitable for operational information systems instead of BI systems. Besides, it only allows Relational Online Analytical Processing (ROLAP) not Multidimensional Online Analytical Processing (MOLAP).
Deployment Issues:
There have been no issues with the deployment.
Stability Issues:
We have had no issues with the stability.
Scalability Issues:
It's been able to scale for our needs.
Other Advice:
Because we use it in many information systems (Financial, Human Resources, Inventory Management) in several large companies with significant data flow, we have not had problems. It was effective as a product.
Read the product documentation well and know the configuration parameters because just one incorrect parameter can affect the entire database.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Computer Science Teacher at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
I've had no issues deploying it.
What is most valuable?
- Confidentiality
- Integrity
- Availability
- Bug free
I like to work with a piece of software that is bug free and doesn't required to be launched in order that users will find a couple of bugs in the coming weeks and that the company has to fix it.
How has it helped my organization?
It helped me to find an easy and inexpensive solution for databases
What needs improvement?
It would be interesting to have a cloud based database instead of having to install it on any single machine.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used it for approximately one to two years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
I've had no issues deploying it.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability was an issue, because when coding under Eclipse with Java, some errors occurred while trying to connect to the database, so troubleshooting may be difficult, since you don't know if it's a Java coding issue or a PostgreSQL translation issue.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
There have been no issues scaling it.
How are customer service and technical support?
I never used any customer service or technical support during that time. I used to find alternatives to my issues.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Since Oracle was expensive for a company business an inexpensive way was to focus on PostgreSQL.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward, just activating various modules was more complex.
What about the implementation team?
We did it in-house.
What was our ROI?
I saved money instead of using the Oracle solution, which might be more secure than PostgreSQL in various ways.
What other advice do I have?
You need to find a lot of time in order to find all functionality and get used to the PostgreSQL syntax Be patient, look for various forums and do learning by doing.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
CTO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Array and JSON fields is good. It is too restrictive in cross-table/view constraints.
Valuable Features:
- Updatable views (also over multiple tables)
- Array and JSON fields
- Point-in-time backup and recovery (WAL files archiving)
Room for Improvement:
I find, sometimes, that it is too restrictive in cross-table/view constraints. This is very annoying as I needed to change a field definition from VARCHAR(10) to VARCHAR(30) and, having a group of views depend in it, the only solution was to implement a function that would:
- Read the view definitions
- Store them
- Delete the views
- Update the field definition
- Recreate the views
It took me like three or four hours (and caused a lot of stress) to make such a simple change. To me it looks a bit too overkill, especially nowadays that application requirements and implementation change so often.
Use of Solution:
I have used it for one and a half years.
Deployment Issues:
There were no problems with deployment.
Scalability Issues:
The app hasn’t had the need to scale much yet.
Initial Setup:
It was quite straightforward.
Implementation Team:
I implemented it myself and don’t have any particular advice about it. Today I would consider implementing it via Docker.
Other Solutions Considered:
I've only used online open source resources and would say there's not as much as there is for MySQL. Sometimes it took me some time to find a good solution to the more unusual scenarios
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Technical Lead with 1,001-5,000 employees
It improves the query performance a lot. Sometimes it hangs and then we need to stop and start the services again.
What is most valuable?
PostgreSQL gives you much more flexibility because it's open source.
How has it helped my organization?
It improves the query performance a lot and helped in some real time and analytic reporting
What needs improvement?
Sometimes it hangs and then we need to stop and start the services again
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used it for three years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
We've had no issues with the deployment.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There have been no stability issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have had no issues scaling it.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
7.5/10
Technical Support:7.5/10
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
No other solution was used.
How was the initial setup?
It was straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
We used a vendor team.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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I am looking to implement PostgreSQL in AWS for a 100T database . Anyone with such experience?
I don't think I can do RDS due to the 16T limitation. Suggestions please