TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Google Sheets

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/AGoogle Sheets is the spreadsheet app available on Google Workspace, or standalone, with a free plan for personal use and accessible via mobile apps for iOS and Android.N/A

    IBM Informix

    Score10 out of 10
    N/AInformix is an embedded relational database offering from IBM.N/A
    Pricing
    Google SheetsIBM Informix
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Google SheetsIBM Informix
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Google SheetsIBM Informix
    Considered Both Products
    Google
    No answer on this topic
    IBM
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    97%
    Would buy again
    90 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    86 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    89 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    94%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    49 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    60 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Best Alternatives
    Google SheetsIBM Informix
    Small Businesses
    Stackby
    Score8.8 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Microsoft Excel
    Score9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    Microsoft Excel
    Score9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Google SheetsIBM Informix
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (93 ratings)
    9.1
    (7 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    8.7
    (55 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Availability
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.8
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Google SheetsIBM Informix
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Google
    Google Sheets is well suited in two main areas: is free to use and you don't need to buy a license to use it, comparing to the most direct competitors ; collaboration is in my opinion the best advantage, with multiple people working together and seeing others working in real time. It's less appropriate in low connectivity environments (offline capabilities)
    Read full review
    IBM
    IBM Informix creates an effective and secure channel for easy and quick data management and transfer across other major Cloud platforms and other data storage systems. The analytical ability is also the best and most effective visual functionalities and the encryption and the data archiving functionalities are great and easy on reporting.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Google
    • Collaborative planning : In the initial phase of project, Team leads and architects create a permission matrix along with the naming convention simultaneously, seeing who is editing / adding the details in real-time.
    • Cost tracking : We use this tool to track cloud resource usage monthly costs, so that we can analyse it and send out comms for high cost based resources. By storing cost data here, it's easy for use to store data of last couple of years.
    • Flexible documentation : For change logging of different scenarios we would need different / ad-hoc columns to be added on the fly, which makes using this tool much simpler then reputed third party tools.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • Industry leading OLTP performance.
    • Excellent Data Warehouse performance from the basic engine. Outstanding Data Warehouse performance from the Informix Warehouse Accelerator module.
    • Best embedability among major RDBMS systems.
    • Scalable from the smallest Raspberry PI up to the largest monolithic systems and out to dozens of distributed nodes.
    • Hybrid data capabilities to merge relational data with time seriesv, geospacial data, JSON data and other non-traditional data types with performance comparable or better than systems dedicated to those data types.
    • The latest release, v15.0, removes nearly all internal limits. Informix now supports database sizes up to 0.5 Yottabytes!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Google
    • Ease of use - I collaborate with a lot of folks on these and a lot of them have trouble using it.
    • Would love more live features; for example, being able to have cells react to other inputs (checkboxes, etc) with reactive formatting
    • More cross-usability with other Google products; it's hard to think of drawbacks honestly, this is a pretty seamless software.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • It is very difficult to find a missing functionality in Informix, technically is great. I will again criticize the business side and how it has been managed over the past, I hope this could be improved with HCL's help. I know they are working hard, but we need to start letting the world know and revert their concept about its existence and that it is one of the best competitors within the data treatment, in the market. We need to start telling the world about success cases and stories showing this and backing up its strong technology.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Google
    I am not involved in the purchase/selection process, but my organization is a Google shop, and Sheets meets most of our spreadsheet needs and works seamlessly with our other tools. I don't anticipate our switching anytime soon.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    Informix is the best RDBMS on the market. Period.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Google
    It can easily handle most uses and functions. It is only for very large datasets or advanced analysis that it either lacks the proper functions or performance begins to slow. Most employees who continue to use competitors' products do so out of preference, familiarity with the user interface, or other surface-level reasons.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    Server management is easy enough to be able to embed the engine in a device and let it run for years without maintenance.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Google
    Like most Google products, Google Sheets rarely has outages or slowness, and when it does, connection is always momentarily restored. I can't recall a time when I've been unable to access Google Sheets but able to access other sites just fine. That said, errors aren't uncommon when handling large data volume. You know what they say about using spreadsheets as databases, but sometimes it's just the most convenient option, especially for smaller or one-off projects, and not being able to store large amounts of data hampers our ability to move quickly with scrappy prototypes or full solutions. It would be great if we could better integrate our data manipulation (Apps Script) with big data in the sheet.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Google
    Again, Google Sheets is no exception to Google's general high speed and reliability, but load times can be slow for larger amounts of data. I've used Sheets with Zapier and have used the Python API, and speed has never been an issue.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Google
    I have never contacted Google Sheets support, but Google Sheets makes it very easy to report an issue or suggest a feature from Sheets itself (Help > Help Sheets improve), and I've had mostly good experiences with support for other Google products.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    The Informix product support team has won awards and is appreciated by the entire Informix user community.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Google
    I have found that I can do almost everything I could have done in Microsoft Excel faster and easier in Google Sheets. We recommend Google Sheets in 99.9% of our use cases and feel it meets the needs of our workers very well. I am sure there are other spreadsheet creation programs out there, but because we are already in the Google environment, adopting Google Sheets in very easy.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    IBM Informix creates effective solutions for big data extraction and data transportation functionalities across the entire Cloud services and the Automation ability is the best. The security that IBM Informix provides for all our business data and other project information and contacts is effective and the reports are very clean and easy to understand.
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Google
    I'm not involved with the purchase, but I assume everything goes smoothly and that the pricing structure is predictable and reasonable. We do not get surprise fees.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Google
    Google Sheets works very well with multiple users. It's convenient to see in real-time who is collaborating in a sheet, down to the specific cell that they're viewing/editing. Linking Sheets across departments is convenient with the IMPORTRANGE function.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Google
    • Don't need to pay for windows 365 license as it is free
    • Has a positive impact since I am not cursing excel for annoying problems(I don't want the new Pivot table format, I want to use Classic and I don't want to expand/collapse arrows. "x$#%")
    • [Haven't] looked at return on investment on work, but has "simplified" for basic and medium spreadsheets.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • Although I do not own nor have visibility on my company's figures:
    • Informix generates consistent savings on DBA staffing, no need for many DBAs as other DBMS require.
    • The replication architecture allowed consistent savings in the infrastructure as well as developments and maintenance, the job is already done, no need to develop complex and costly solutions, it's just a matter of configuring it.
    • The advantages of hybrid development (i.e mixing SQL and NoSQL in the same database) is not just a marketing hype: it allowed us to solve with a brilliant solution, in one afternoon of coding, a functional problem we have been having for more than 10 years!
    • The biggest drawback is that IBM pricing may be constraining, it has too important gaps between the mid range and highrange in terms of pricing
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots