We compared PostgreSQL and Firebird SQL based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
Overall, PostgreSQL is praised for its robustness, stability, efficiency, and customer service, while Firebird SQL receives appreciation for its integration capabilities and security measures. PostgreSQL users highlight its performance, scalability, and wide range of features, while Firebird SQL users value its speed, scalability, and resource management. Both have affordable pricing and efficient customer support, but PostgreSQL users note the need for better optimization and documentation, whereas Firebird SQL users want improved performance and error messaging.
Features: PostgreSQL offers robustness, scalability, and an extensive range of built-in data types. Users praise its excellent performance and advanced SQL functionality. On the other hand, Firebird SQL is valued for its seamless integration with programming languages, high-performance capabilities, and strong data security measures. Both products have their unique strengths.
Pricing and ROI: PostgreSQL offers flexible pricing options with manageable setup costs and fair licensing terms, catering to various budgets. On the other hand, Firebird SQL is known for its reasonable and affordable pricing, low setup costs, and straightforward licensing process. Both products have different approaches to cost and setup., PostgreSQL emerged as a valuable investment with impressive functionalities, scalability, security features, and seamless integration. Firebird SQL also yielded positive returns but lacks specific highlights.
Room for Improvement: PostgreSQL: Areas for improvement include enhancing overall performance and optimization, addressing difficulties during installation and configuration, improving documentation and resources for developers, and enhancing the user interface for easier navigation. Firebird SQL: Improvements needed in performance and speed, especially with larger datasets. Better documentation and detailed error messages are necessary for troubleshooting. Query optimization and compatibility with other databases should also be enhanced.
Deployment and customer support: The user reviews for PostgreSQL indicate that deployment and setup took either three months with an additional week or just one week. In contrast, the reviews for Firebird SQL are mixed, with some users stating a quick process of around a week for all phases and others reporting several months for deployment alone., PostgreSQL's customer service and support have been praised for their responsiveness, helpfulness, and effectiveness. Firebird SQL's customer service is highly regarded for their promptness, efficiency, knowledge, and friendliness.
The summary above is based on 17 interviews we conducted recently with PostgreSQL and Firebird SQL users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"I appreciate the fact that, once the database is embedded, it doesn't need to be administered, and removes the requirement for a specific server."
"The documentation is very well written."
"I can deploy it on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows — it's very easy."
"Firebird SQL is an open-source solution and can run on most operating systems, such as Linux, Unix, and Windows."
"Firebird SQL is an open-source solution."
"I like that we don't have to pay external fees to migrate this data. So, we are looking to relocate from Postgres or EDB."
"We are happy with the event capabilities of Firebird SQL database. We can raise events from it and display them in our application."
"Robustness is the absolutely main feature."
"PostgreSQL makes it very adaptable to several descriptions of a record. Instead of having several tables or several relations for one entity, I can adapt this entity. It can be a multiform entity. For example, here in Mexico, a company and a person can be sold to us as a physical entity or a physical person."
"The main value is that it is open source, which means it is free. Our organization has the initiative to go to open source to cut down on cost. Oracle costs us $6 million a year right now, which is killing us, and Postgres costs nothing. So, there is a big push to go to Postgres."
"It's quite scalable."
"It is very simple to manage."
"It's a standard reliable database management system."
"The product is quite flexible."
"Scalable, stable, and easy to manage database system, with a straightforward installation."
"With the database, you can provide a multi-component at the same service with the same performance, scalability, or all those things."
"On large databases, we have some difficulties."
"It would be good to have more automation and integration with the tools from other vendors."
"I don't think the solution is very scalable, because the scalability of the performance when using more than one process is not very good."
"It is not easy to integrate the tool with Visual Studio."
"Database sharing is a capability that Firebird SQL lacks."
"The main feature I expect is to be able to work with different databases at the same time because that's a wishlist item for me."
"The security of the users could improve in Firebird SQL."
"This solution isn't very user-friendly, or intuitive, which could be improved when it is developed."
"As PostgreSQL is an open-source product, you do have to do a bit more configuration and management yourself."
"Instead of the installation agent downloading all the packages for the install, it should allow the user to download the packages separately on their own to do the install."
"The pricing could be better."
"I have noticed that user and access management should be improved."
"The solution could improve the integration."
"The solution needs to improve the query, documentation, and JSON data functionality."
"The database and applications can become very slow."
"It still needs to be more mature and have some backup feature. We are normally dealing with Oracle's data, and we have very strong online tools to back up the data and do other things. PostgreSQL still needs to do more in this area as well as in the high availability area. There are many external tools that you can use for PostgreSQL's high availability, but there is no embedded tool within PostgreSQL for high availability. It could have a feature similar to Oracle for working on a distributed system. It can have some scripts to improve the monitoring and some tools to do performance analysis. We have a workaround for most of such requirements except for the support for a distributed system, which is very difficult to have. This area should be included in the core of the database itself."
Firebird SQL is ranked 4th in Open Source Databases with 14 reviews while PostgreSQL is ranked 2nd in Open Source Databases with 120 reviews. Firebird SQL is rated 7.8, while PostgreSQL is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Firebird SQL writes "A stable and freely available tool with well-written documents". On the other hand, the top reviewer of PostgreSQL writes " A scalable and stable database for transactional purposes". Firebird SQL is most compared with MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite and Oracle MySQL Cloud Service, whereas PostgreSQL is most compared with EDB Postgres Advanced Server, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite and YugabyteDB. See our Firebird SQL vs. PostgreSQL report.
See our list of best Open Source Databases vendors.
We monitor all Open Source Databases reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
