--- title: IBM Informix Reviews meta_title: 'IBM Informix Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 111 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how IBM Informix works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.5 review_count: 111 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-04' parent_category: name: Database Software url: https://www.g2.com/categories/database-software --- # IBM Informix Reviews **Vendor:** IBM **Category:** [Relational Databases](https://www.g2.com/categories/relational-databases) **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 111 ## About IBM Informix • Harness data with broad functionality and unlimited scalability. IBM Informix is a secure embeddable database, optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things (IoT) data. Informix has the unique ability to seamlessly integrate SQL, NoSQL/JSON, time series and spatial data. Everyone from developers to global enterprises can benefit from its reliability, flexibility, ease of use and low total cost of ownership. • Optimize business decisions Perform analytics close to data sources to enhance local decision making. Access business intelligence faster with enhanced integration with various tools and applications. • Eliminate downtime Ensure always-on operations across your grid environment. Upgrade, maintain and configure the grid with no downtime. Successfully meet service-level agreements. • Improve development agility Support both structured and unstructured data with a hybrid database system for enhanced flexibility and easier development. • IBM Informix is available on-premise and on the IBM Cloud. IBM Informix on Cloud offers the complete feature set of on-premises Informix deployments. Run your OLTP queries and workloads on an optimized instance and use the Informix warehouse accelerator to configure in-memory query acceleration for predictive analytics. Get the benefits of Informix without the cost, complexity and risk of managing your own infrastructure. IBM Informix V14.10 enhances all editions, bringing improvements to performance, security, administration, and core database capabilities including support for online transaction processing (OLTP) and replication workloads, timeseries and spatial data. Discover why many of the world’s most innovative companies depend on IBM Informix. ## IBM Informix Reviews ### 1. A review of Informix **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Building Materials | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 23, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** I like the fine tuning capabilities and control offered by Informix vs other database solutions. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Setup can be a bit verbose compared to other solutions and the licensing a bit confusing. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a full stack programmer in a small shop, I maintain the database and write applications with Informix addressing the business concerns of a concrete ready mix company. ### 2. Informix - Realiable and easy to maintain best database for hybrid OLTP and Analytics environments **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 24, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** It's easy to install and to administer. Powerful and plenty of features. High availavility and replication is awesome. Just works. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Some lack of SQL functions still not implemented. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** It's the easiest to install and maintain and more powerful enterprise grade database I know. You will not need anything more. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** OLTP tasks, financial databases and datawarehouse analytics. ### 3. IBM Informix - Reliable, Secure and Fast **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Telecommunications | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 24, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Informix is reliable, secure and fast! **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Not much to dislike in the product. It works with less staff to support it than many other databases out there. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Transaction processing power and support for many types of data types. Love the ability to rely on the product, ease of use. Simple solution for complex business problems. ### 4. I've been working with Informix over the past 15 years and find it very reliable and maintenance fre **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Accounting | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 25, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** It's maintenance free, up-time is amazing **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Working with NULL values have always been an issue in past but I understand this will be resolved in newer release. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our business works with confidential data as well as secure payments. 100% accessibility is the greatest benefits with our product. ### 5. Informix is THE best **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Government Administration | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 24, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** We have customers using Informix - they do not have any problem **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Marketing is zero. IBM/HCL support is not good as it should be **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** Just GO **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have partners producing many different apps. End customers don't even know they are using Informix ### 6. Informix the robust guy !!!! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 25, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Informix is much stable in OLTP servers. It's much stable the uptime of a instance is higher. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** The marketing of Informix. It doesn't have much customers . **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** After applying the fix packs on v12 we have prevented the engine crash ### 7. IIUG 2019 World Conference **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Insurance | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 02, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** It's a stable product and database. It's easy to develop and provide excellent OLTP for the company. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Not enough marketing to the outside customers. Need to explore schools to teach. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Processing claims and premium for company. ### 8. Zero downtime, super performance, minimal hardware. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Retail | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 23, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Easy to setup and administer. Very reliable. Perfect database for the lazy DBA. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Lack of product marketing and lack of third party support. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** Try it, you will never use anything else. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Exceptional performance and zero downtime. Rich feature set. ### 9. IIUG 2019 World Conference **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 24, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Improve performance in the database with a large volume of data. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** In the minor versions, it is difficult to see the users' queries and the execution time. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Transactionality, data volumes, space reservation. ### 10. Wonderful RDBMS **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Government Administration | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 14, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Informix is powerful, stable and easy to learn. As an Operations Manager, my team depends on the stability of Informix to focus on more important tasks such as data protection and quality of data. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** New features tend to take long to be released. As a customer I need to see more about the roadmap for informix to understand how it is evolving to meet new technology advancements. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** Database Administrators should be focused on managing the ecosystem and the variables that interact with that ecosystem. So many other RDBMS are complicated and require extensive training and experience to administer. Informix is simple to use, very solid and stable as a RDBMS and should be used for your enterprise systems. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Informix is our core RDBMS for enterprise systems. It provides a stable platform for core services of our clients distributed across the island also in our Datacenters. ### 11. IIUG 2019 World Conference **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 24, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Great product, very stable not being constantly patched as other are. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** needs more visibility to the industry, as many see it as dead product **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** stable product easy to grow as work load does. ### 12. Falling behind **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Logistics and Supply Chain | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 24, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** HQ dashboard is a nice new feature, very good for visibility. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Dated user base and small market share, doesn't seem to be attracting new customers. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Legacy ERP systems at work. ### 13. Informix - Best Database **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 24, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** After getting past numerous Assert Failure issues in earlier versions, Informix has performed very well. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Assert Fails - though they've become must less frequent. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Faster processing. Time and money. ### 14. Informix - Best Database **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Business Supplies and Equipment | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 24, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Informix HQ is one of the best features to streamline your deployment **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** I believe that closed ecosystem kills the product **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Informix is a pretty fast and robust database. ### 15. IIUG 2019 World Conference **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Government Administration | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 24, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Break out sessions were very informative. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Liked everything. Everything at the IIUG was fine. Nothing was disliked. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Case management for US federal courts ### 16. Informix Database is reliabe and fast **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Logistics and Supply Chain | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 24, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Administration free, fast, reliable, easy to mantain **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** No good marketing, no visibilty of the product in the market **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Run my ERP-Solutions ### 17. Experience in Informix since 1992 **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 24, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Multithreading, High Availability, time series and security **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Need publicity campain about its functionality **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** Training **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Response times in OLTP environment ### 18. Fast, reliable and easy to use **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vicente S. | Software Architect, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 12, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Its powerfull features keeping easy configuration and maintenance. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Bad support from IBM to this great product **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** This is as good as other competitors database and it's easy to maintain and administer. It's the unique database I've used you can install and maintain as a black box, without a dedicated DBA **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Keeping datawarehouse, OLTP and hybrid databases running on same architecture and product and interacting as a single one. ### 19. x **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 09, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** z **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** x **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** - ### 20. My experience with Informix **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kenny Alexander B. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 17, 2018 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Informix is a great engine. It's fairly straightforward to learn. I have taken 2 sysads and had them be effective at the end of a day of training. Always requires less headcount to support. As far as being able to take advantage of ALL system resources, Informix can do it. Have seen other db's hit limits, but not Informix. Also, the user community is very strong. Those who use Informix are usually very passionate about it and believe in it. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Although I have not installed a version 12 and above, installation was a little odd from time to time. It's serious software so it needs to be done correctly but IBM could do a better job there. SQL support can also be a little more up to date. The big editions can be pricey and powerful servers, even if you do not need all this power. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used it for mission-critical OLTP financial services and have found it very robust and stable. Required minimum maintenance and uptime is great. Provides multiple HA options/technologies ### 21. Scaling Performance with IDS **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Henri C. | CTO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 12, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Informix is a easy to install database with high performance scaling by default installation **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** I dislike that IBM's marketing for this fantastic product is very bad **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use this for every kind of OLTP and Warehouse business cases. For small to enterprise customers. ### 22. No issues **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nitish A. | Sr Software Commoditiy MAnager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 13, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Sales person is fantastics. Thank you for the support and ease of doing bis **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** These nothing that I do not dislike and will looking for it **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** None. ### 23. Product manager **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 12, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** It's multi-model capabilities and its effectiveness in the IoT solution chain **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** needs more visibility in social media and in the usual marketing terms **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are starting to see the benefits in our IoT division solutions with its small footprint and its low administration costs ### 24. New features in Informix 14.10 - taking the product forward **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 12, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Exciting to see customer's input in driving new features and plans for the future **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Lack of marketing for the product's benefits **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a partner, I like to hear how clients are using the product and continue to plan for the future with Informix. ### 25. Long term very satisfied user of IBM Informix **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Networking | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 13, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** The Sales team provides excellent support, great value & high quality product. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** there is nothing i don't like abouty Informix. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** we are solving complex business problems, where we haver gotten many, many benefits ### 26. Always on and replication **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Retail | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 12, 2019 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Small footprint, always on. The HA feature and connection manager works great. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** No integration with monitoring tools. Lacks **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Business contenity, Our production systems runs for 20 years. ### 27. Informix Server Studio **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 19, 2018 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** It is easy to setup and use it. Simple and intuitive interface let you do your job well. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Probably, too old and doesn't support some of the latest technologies. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** If you need strong and simple SQL software Informix will be a good choice for you. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Informix Server Studio helps us to provide a business with quality product and to protect sensitive information. ### 28. Durable Database Engine **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 06, 2018 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Easy to learn. Reliability, Durability. Performance. No unplanned downtime. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** There's not thing which I dislike about this software. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Banking system. To store, query large data for my client. ### 29. Does the job with few stability issues **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Entertainment | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 08, 2018 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** ease of use, stability is paramount for our business reputation and we have few stability issue with informix **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** does require regular patching however often this is done cold. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** db related ### 30. Fast and trustworthy **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Food & Beverages | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 17, 2018 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Fast and trustworthy database server based on solaris **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Some complex to administrate if you dont have knowledge and experience **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Main program database ### 31. Always a pleasure **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Spokey W. | Director, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 25, 2017 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** I like the performance, the ease of use and maintenance and generally very talented and helpful support team. Setting it up is easy. Performance out of the box is great. Tuning it is very easy and the latest versions have outstanding diagnostics. It also has a remarkable feature set, especially if you look at the ease of a grid implementation compared to other vendors. And then there's the extensibility. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** IBM does very little to market Informix. I can't blame them, they have thousands of software products, but it means the product has a lot less market awareness than it deserves. Security is a bit of a grey area, but it's no more of an issue than it is for any other vendor. The documentation for TimeSeries is not up to par with the rest of the product set. The people designed and built the various DataBlades are some of the smartest people I know, sadly the documentation doesn't really get the rest of the world up to speed. I'd definitely recommend some consultancy if you're going to implement TimeSeries. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** Do it. IBM's marketing is terrible, but the product is superb: easy to install and configure, easy to administer and incredibly powerful and fast. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Over the years, I've solved pretty much every kind of business problem, whether ERP, logistics, telco, retail, financial, medical... whatever, really. Lately I'm using Informix to help solve time series problems in the energy and utilities market. Benefits include blistering performance, outstanding uptime, incredibly light-touch admin and integration with pretty much every development platform. ### 32. Informix Database **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Commercial Real Estate | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 19, 2018 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** The performance and the ease of using it. The setup was fairly easier then others. Maintenance is minimal and so is downtown **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** lack of roadmap and lack of features . Not many software out there that uses Informix as db. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** Just do it. Been working with Informix for about years now. There is no indirect cost to use it which is great **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** reliability - Zero shutdown in last 2 years Hardware - Current application is housing over 4000 users The NoSQL is a great plus In house data analytics systems ### 33. High volume OLTP database **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Gambling & Casinos | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 05, 2017 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** We get direct support from IBM experts and are closer to the development team as a large customer that we would be if we ran Oracle or SQL Server, for example. We manage high OLTP volumes running a site turning over in excess of £1bn+ annually and the product is scalable and by and large very reliable. We find the replication and high availability features and are very good and priced very competitively compared to other offerings. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** There could always be more features and a faster development roadmap. I am hoping that the new HCL partnership will go some way to address this. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** It provides us with a reliable high-availability ACID-compliant database product capable of scaling to both large transaction volumes with databases 10s of Tbs. Amongst other things it has facilitated the rapid growth of our business. ### 34. Informix **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Grey P. | analista de siniestros, Insurance, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 23, 2016 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** very good .. as it is a database management system very avansado data, and is one of the most popular. It is very fast and efficient **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** nothing dislike this manager .. everything is excellent . **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** 100 % recommended for all who seek speed and confidence when making your BDD **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** many benefits with this manager as his fluency helped me build a database for my project it engineering ### 35. Extremely durable, powerful, reliable and fast db engine **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Peter M. | Database Systems Architect, Telecommunications, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 08, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Informix is a great engine. It's fairly straightforward to learn. I have taken 2 sysads and had them be effective at the end of a day of training. Always requires less headcount to support. As far as being able to take advantage of ALL system resources, Informix can do it. Have seen other db's hit limits, but not Informix. Also, the user community is very strong. Those who use Informix are usually very passionate about it and believe in it. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** IBM seems to promote their db2 product line in all of their marketing. There aren't as many third party tools or commercial off the shelf software out there written to use Informix as the underlying db, which can be very frustrating. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** I consider Informix to be the Humvee of the database world. It's extremely stable, powerful, and flexible. IBM has recently changed it's licensing/cost model to be a little more like Oracle in that there are extra pieces you can buy to enhance the experience (enterprise replication being one). The biggest knock against Informix is that no one outside of the existing user base seems to know it's still heavily used. Look on any job board, and you'll see at least a 10:1 ratio of any other db to informix. I've seen informix in use at numerous locations and the informix teams are always smaller and handling more activity. I've used MSSQL, Oracle, MySQL, and db2. I simply prefer Informix. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Have only used it for OLTP type activity. I can't speak to the warehousing aspect. For OLTP it can provide continuous uptime for many different types of applications. ### 36. Informix. The best database. Period. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Art S. K. | President and Principal Consultant, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 08, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Performance. Features. Innovation. Reliability (5 9's++). Zero unplanned downtime. Best DR/HA features and performance. Scalability both up and out. Ease of maintenance and tuning. Multiple workload capable (OLTP & Data Warehouse on the same server). Relational and NoSQL capable. Native REST access. Informix offers six different types of data replication, distributed database, sharding, central master database, and other schemes for scaling and customizing the location and availability of your data. It offers load balancing tied to disaster recovery/high availability and the ability to very quickly bring additional servers online to handle unusual load. Data can be distributed and/or replicated across homogeneous or heterogeneous server farms. Server version upgrades can be applied to a cluster of servers while permitting users to connect to the database and continuously access their data with no downtime. Servers and client connections can be configured to guarantee that no transactions are lost, even if the primary server or its host goes offline. This combination of features ensures that Informix is always on and always available. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** That IBM cannot manage to get over the fact that the best database system they sell was not originally invented at IBM. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** Just do it. Informix users are all fanatical in their love for this database system. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Banking systems. Securities systems. Medical/health systems. Retail systems. Retail logistics systems. Retail warehouse systems. Manufacturing systems. Wholesale products systems. Data analytics systems. ### 37. Users love it, competitors hate it because it is too good **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ivan S. | Software Development Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 04, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Easy to install, very easy to use, powerful, versatile and easy to manage and configure **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** It lacks built-in functions for hierarchycal recursive trees building, querying and traversal **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** I believe this is one of the best commercial RDBMS. Version 12 supports SQL and NoSQL paradigms in the same database. It also has a very good interaction with the Java platform and if you are a user of the 4GL programming language or its competitors such as Querix Lycia, using either is way easy and straightforward. One of the best tools I have ever used is onstat. This command is like talking to the database engine on a one to one basis. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Very large information systems with a huge database. Data history of more than 10 years in a single database ### 38. Best customer loyalty rate in the "for charge" area **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Eric V. | Member of Board of Directors, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 10, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** * Reliability and stability: the identified record uptime is more than 6 years uptime * Scalability: real multithread architecture allows smooth horizontal and vertical scalability * Best rate for performance / hardware sizing: amazing performance level achieved with very moderate size hardware * Best rate for staffing: no need for an army of DBA. Some companies handle 30,000+ informix servers with a team of 6 DBA's 24/7/365 * Replication functionality is very complete, although very simple to admin * the Informix Warehouse Accelerator is a software appliance that you plug into Informix, that can turn BI/DS queries by 700+ times faster, with no necessity to rewrite the DS applications not replug them anywhere else * Works great on ARM/Quark processors, making it a great asset for IOT **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** * Some of the SQL language is not yet as rich as other DBMS vendors * IBM poorly promoting one of their best assets, although this is changing for better now **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** Informix has poor visibility on the market. Make your own idea with user companies and you will see that a company that uses Informix does not want anything else, when speaking on technical terms. Best way to achieve to register to the International Informix User Group http://www.iiug.org and or attend the Annual IIUG Conference www.iiug2015.org **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Speaking for customers in Health and Finance: * reliabilty: server not shutdown since 20010 * staffing: 1/7 of a DBA for a 4000 users Informix system, 4 DBAs for smaller Oracle systems * hardware: 4000 users working * hybrid possibilities: Informix is ready for NoSQL and works better than MongoDB. My customer will develop new applications in MongoDB client, accessing Informix Database Server, and mix SQL data with NoSQL data. ### 39. Informix is unfairly the unknown best data manager **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrés R. | Principal Database Architect, Internet, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 09, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** To explain what I like best, I am going to refer to two aspects: A) NoSQL vs RDBMS and B) Freeware and Licensed Engines A) Distributed data is based on replication, and data partitioning lets you not only to scale your overall performance up, but also improve availability. There are two streams, one that is based on Hadoop and the other one is based on Sharding, the first one requires a huge amount of disk space, another invisible cost, and that initially none is caring about, as the storage costs drops, no need to worry or concern about data duplication and wasting space. In addition to the space issue, it is that the data is open, and there are not many security tools yet to hide the data and secure it. I am not sure everyone shares or knows these things…, so again this is confronting people with different ways of thinking. On the other hand maintaining replication in Hadoop is not a plug and play thing, it also has its challenges and requires complex java scripting. At last if we use Hadoop we are going towards a NoSQL or unstructured DB, and again, this is where many people get confused with…, so why turning the wheel to the opposite direction!, whilst we can use distributed data implemented in RDBMS (sharding)…, we have to have in count that NoSQL sacrifies consistency mainly by a very bad space consumer optimistic locking method to avoid dealing with atomicity and isolation. Definitely NoSQL can’t replace RDBMS, as the BASE model is for some specific use cases, and for companies that defined their own solutions no other in the market was able to do…, but at that time!, RDBMS have now also powered up their engines, and in one case have even started to integrate and improve the unstructured model integrating it with the structured one, in the same data repository combining the best of both worlds, this is keeping up with the performance and capacity, without scarifying consistency, atomicity and isolation at the same time!. There’s just one company that understood this problem and started working in a new paradigm, and this is to support the unstructured data model together with the structured one. This company is IBM, and its powerful INFORMIX engine. In any of the scenarios, either if by sharding or doing data partitioning required to scale out horizontally, a database engine has needs a very strong replication technology. INFORMIX deployment has been driven by its strengths in replication – Informix employs one of the industry’s most scalable and efficient replication architectures – and data management. It also combines strengths in embedded data management with low administrative overhead, highly effective use of server resources and enterprise-class resilience. INFORMIX is oriented to solving the massive change that is occurring in computing environments around the world. Specifically, unstructured data is flooding into organizations and companies are struggling to choose between a relational or NoSQL database to handle it. While NoSQL offers the ability to have dynamic elasticity with data and its organization, these databases lack essential elements such as scalability, security, flexible deployment, transaction support and full data integration. INFORMIX offers a solution that can natively handle NoSQL and structured data simultaneously providing a single system with the seamless integration of all data within the enterprise. It is meant to help developers use native JSON and BSON data types as well as other NoSQL functions (including sharding) for complete plug-and-play compatibility with MongoDB and other NoSQL databases. Application developers can access structured and unstructured data in a single statement and join them together as needed. NoSQL applications can use the enterprise-level capabilities of a structured database system including transaction support, backup and recovery, H/A, compression, enhanced scalability, security and access control. All these last features are not minor and characteristic of any other NoSQL engine. I think that the hybrid development capability of INFORMIX-NoSQL to manage and present both structured and structured data repositories, is going to be very important as organizations realize that 1) there is value in the new flexible schema paradigms like JSON, 2) existing apps can benefit from being able to present this data, 3) JSON based applications could benefit from access to the relational data that is already in the organization's relational databases, 4) NO new hires will be required to work in the NoSQL/JSON space, simplifying the complex, expensive, slow, and error prone daily ETL, from multiple data sources. B) This is TCO (Total Cost Ownership). This is to do with how easy an engine is to be maintained, this is then to do with TBF (Time Between Failures) or unplanned downtime, and the much the technology allows you to avoid the downtime or plan downtime to reduce it. All this at the light of the incurring expenses to maintain it, support it vs licensing costs. I always like to call these as DIRECT and INDIRECT COSTS. DIRECT COSTS is very simple, it is represented by the licenses cost. INDIRECT COSTS are the ones that NONE seems to sees, it is incredible!. This is why one platform needs more resources than others…, it is simple math, if a platform is all the time requiring an engineer to touch here, and there, today, next month again the same thing in the same place, in one word REDOING!. This is consuming most of te DBA time, that could be used to grow the business. If the DBA spends most of his time in recurrent fixes!..., then it is simple, another DBA is required. It is not just what we redo, but also what we can't do because we are stuck fixing. INDIRECT COSTS are invisible!, incredible, but real. There are also many aspects to consider as INDIRECT COSTS, such as performance, capacity, how much an engine can do with it…, and I am talking about using the same h/w, same data, but how much it is able to process is key…, so HOW MUCH THE ENGINE CAN DO WITH LESS!. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** The bad marketing there is around INFORMIX. I hate ppl when they talk about INFORMIX as an OLD technology. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** Run a ROI and TCO, benchmark it, you'll love it. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** - ### 40. The fastest and more reliable database ever used for business application **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Francesco V. | Sales and Technical Support Specialist, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 06, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Informix provides great features for every kind of use: do you need to setup an high-availability environment? grant simultaneous access to a broad mix of applications? manage terabytes of data? spread your production database on different nodes? use physical and virtual servers with different OSs? Just a very few examples about what you can achieve using Informix. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** The IBM price list uses the Processor Value Unit concept - aka "PVU", which is quite difficult to calculate and manage by the customers. Unfortunately for complex installations the PVU pricing also become very expansive. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** Consider the worldwide market of Informix: telco, healthcare, industries, public administrations, finance and many others. Each market segment can find with Informix a very good and agile friend, helping to minimize technical problems... and increase business. Also evaluate TCO for complex environments: Informix allows to save time in the administration and have a very strong support all around the world. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Every application have peculiar features. This means that normally everytime you have to setup new applications to cover new business needs, you have to think about what development language has been used, what is the target platform, what is the way to connect the application to the backend/data, what level of integration do you need and of course how many users you need to keep concurrently online. All these questions can reflect an impact (or problems) on the database side. Using Informix you have "powerful weapons to fight new business needs" and lots of knowledge (articles, blogs, tech-notes) on how to implement exactly what you need. In my experience I did complex installations using Informix Connection Manager - aka "CM", which is the way to separate the application layer from the database layer and to give to the applications a list of rules about how to connect to the right server, the right database and get the best performance possible to the production environment. This always allows customers to implement very secure and fast architectures, and schedule servers management with no application block and data loss. With a few people in my team, I can manage hundreds of installations, avoiding to loose time to manage Informix instances, and having time to continuosly implement new solutions for new needs. ### 41. Simple to Install, Configure and Maintain **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Keith S. | Senior Infrastructure Specialist, Business Supplies and Equipment, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 17, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Ease of administration, built in replication for Business Continuity and for different schema for Data Warehousing. Ability to 'setup and forget'. Runs on any platform I choose: Unix (preferable), Linux or Windows. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** The last windows install I undertook was not easy, but that was 3 versions (of Informix) ago. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Fundamentally the entire business runs on Informix. Sales Order placement and fulfilment, product warehousing (receipt and despatch). Purchase Order generation and all Ledgers. ### 42. I don't like databases, I love Informix **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jean Georges P. | COO, VP North America, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 09, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** During most of my career, I was involved with software projects and products. I was managing developers and system administrators. The reason we picked Informix was clearly because of its legendary & proven reliability, which brought an awesome TCO to the projects. I like that it follows the business needs: extensibility, XML, NoSQL, and now IoT. It really makes sense for me. I like that there are a lot of editions so it fits your needs pretty well. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Although I have not installed a version 12 and above, installation was a little odd from time to time. It's serious software so it needs to be done correctly but IBM could do a better job there. SQL support can also be a little more up to date. The big editions can be pricey and powerful servers, even if you do not need all this power. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** The community is one of the biggest asset of Informix, discover the community on the IIUG web site at http://www.iiug.org and through its yearly conference. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** The benefits iInformix brought is mainly a great TCO. ### 43. I have loved working with Informix, I think it has all the necessary features and very stable **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Omer Saeed K. | Sr MySQL DBA, Computer Networking, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 10, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** High availability is great (HDR, RSS, Connection Manager) **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** It doesn't support materialized views. And also SQL query language should be further enhanced to add functionality like "minus" operator and bit more sql enhancements that other databases do provide. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** Informix has great potential to be one of the top databases in the market but I think, IBM is not putting much efforts in the marketing and development of Informix. But, still Informix can compete with any databases in the current market and its comparatively low cost of ownership could make it suitable for a lot of organizations as well. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used it for mission-critical OLTP financial services and have found it very robust and stable. Required minimum maintenance and uptime is great. Provides multiple HA options/technologies ### 44. Awesome. No need for a lot of dba work **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sérgio F. | Senior Partner, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 13, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** It just works, and have a lot of functionality **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** IBM don't promote it as it should. This does Informix a less used database with decreasing number of professionals **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** Consider to understand all the features that implement because you can save a lot of developing time. Excellent ROI among commercial databases. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Business oriented software, web based ### 45. I have used Informix in multiple business environements over many platforms. 20+ years using it. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John C. | Senior Informix/SQL Server Database Admin, Pharmaceuticals, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 17, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** With all of the turmoil that Informix has had to go thru it still shines as an amazing RDBMS that can handle any type of application that is thrown at it. Every new feature introduced is usable in about every real world situation. My current job is running with Informix containing a 5TB database and is still performing at top levels. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** It sometimes seems that Informix has been thrown to the back burner under IBM ownership but we do still see new releases so it has gotten better. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** If you want a robust system, Informix is the only way to go for ease of admin and setup. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Serving results of clinical trials to a worldwide customer base with only one server. The benefits of not having to deploy across multiple servers just to get performance increases is huge savings in the long run. ### 46. Informix - tough as nails **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mike W. | Senior Database Consultant, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 10, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** A robust database product that is way ahead of the competition. The incredible feature set and versatility makes it ideal as a back end workhorse supporting huge ERP systems and data warehouses, or as a small footprint database for Internet of Things applications, and everything in between. The Informix Warehouse Accelerator produces is a game changer in terms of fast reporting against enormous data sets. This database is everywhere, and you likely never even knew it - telecommunications, utilities, banking, retail... **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Not well known or publicized, despite its use around the world. Small user community. Incorrectly perceived as older technology. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data warehousing, and recently Internet of Things installations using TimeSeries on ARM processors. ### 47. A full featured, low cost, low administration, reliable and flexible database engine **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alexandre M. | Senior IT Consultant, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 15, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Its confidence, availability, low cost, low adninistration, and wide range of hardware architectures to install and run. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Lack of product market and universities teaching Informix to base users **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** Ask IBM for a certified and specialized Informix partner near you, to talk and discuss. You will not believe a single product has such wonderful features, that can boost your needs in a vrry ease process. Do not discard your hardware in each new product version. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have several customers from mid size to VLDB,. Informix is doing well in all of them, but companies that do not invest in development trainings make poor quality software. ### 48. Informix IDS is simply the best RDBMS I ever know **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Hamza Z. | Informix Consultant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 16, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** I definitely like it's architecture especiallly disk soace, memory and proces management. It implements a trully multithereading feature and you can see the parallelism in action. You can see also how Informix IDS deals with it's best friends, Unix and Linux systems. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Most of clients using Informix are not aware of the benefits they can get from a well configured IDS engine, since it's works without the need of doing administrave tasks on it, I think that Informix developpers must focus on administration tools like OAT that wil make it easy to Informix users to know more about their RDBMS. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am working as a Consultant and all what I k,ow is that Informix has been deployed on huge companies around the world. I have seen for example a bank in Dubai with 600 users working on a database server with only 2GB of mamory. ### 49. A boot and forget, fast and reliable database management system **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Philippe B. | ingénieur, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 16, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Informix offers a state of the art database management system, which is fast, reliable and very easy to maintain. At least for small to mid size databases like ours (< 1Tb) you barely have to do any administrative task. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Language support for web development could be improved, with first class support and documentation for languages other than java and C/C++ **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** Don't pay too much attention to marketing (informix sucks at this) go for the technical aspects. Minimal configuration, extended capabilities, performance. Check revues for feedback on reliability. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Informix powers our electronic health record product ### 50. Informix is "The Best" product available on the planet. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 08, 2015 **What do you like best about IBM Informix?** Maintenance free database in the market, just set it correctly and it will serve you for ever. Runs mostly on all the Operating Systems available in the market. **What do you dislike about IBM Informix?** Less work for DBAs, managers think if they really need any administrators. Cost factor and marketing which is not done properly. Also need to give free software to new vendors who implement their application on this database. **Recommendations to others considering IBM Informix:** Honestly try Informix at least once to compare results with other competitor, and you should able to make a decision. If you don't have liberty of this test, just go for Informix and you will thank me for making this decision. **What problems is IBM Informix solving and how is that benefiting you?** I support multiple clients from different industries in their business flow, assist them reduce cost and keep the instance stable and online. Also time to time suggest them of various new features available with the new versions. ## IBM Informix Discussions - [Standard 4GL is still a great product, Why don't add new features?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/standard-4gl-is-still-a-great-product-why-don-t-add-new-features) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [How do I program 4GL and Create Mobile Apps.](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-do-i-program-4gl-and-create-mobile-apps) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [Version 11.70 - Where should look if I am having problems with triggers via a stored procedure?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/version-11-70-where-should-look-if-i-am-having-problems-with-triggers-via-a-stored-procedure) - 2 comments, 1 upvote - [View IBM Informix pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/ibm-informix/reviews?page=2§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-05+07%3A58%3A40+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=376d6b04-b7ef-4363-a7e3-375d79875b2a&secure%5Btoken%5D=61207f4eaf3f29a1785f122b308c305f3b79bdeef912d933644c1828dc93f976&format=llm_user) ## IBM Informix Features **Management** - Real-Time Analytics - Solution Integration - Infrastructure Compatibility - Monitoring **Management ** - Data Schema - Query Language - ACID - Complaint - Data Replication **Management** - Disaster Recovery - Remote Backup - Storage Formats - Scheduled Backups - On-Demand Restoration **Solution Provision** - System Failover - Pay by Usage - Service Provision **Support ** - Text Search - Data Types - Languages - Operating Systems **Reporting** - Activity Monitoring - Documentation - Alerts/Notifications **Security** - Database Locking - Access Control - Encryption - Authentication **Security** - Data Encryption - Security and Compliance - Deduplication **Performance ** - Disaster Recovery - Data Concurrency - Workload Management - Advanced Indexing - Query Optimizer **Database Features** - Storage - Availability - Stability - Scalability - Security - Data Manipulation - Query Language ## Top IBM Informix Alternatives - [Microsoft SQL Server](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-sql-server/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (2,127 reviews) - [MySQL](https://www.g2.com/products/mysql/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (1,582 reviews) - [Oracle Database](https://www.g2.com/products/oracle-database/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (932 reviews)