Choosing a database for modern SaaS workloads

Founders routinely ask us which database they should start with. The honest answer is “it depends,” but we can outline the trade-offs we see most often.

Postgres (Pixetric)

Postgres remains the best general-purpose database for transactional workloads: rich SQL, ACID guarantees, JSON support, extensions, and an enormous ecosystem. Pixetric builds on Postgres by making compute elastic and branchable, which removes the operational work required to scale it.

Use when: you need strong consistency, flexible querying, and a roadmap that includes analytics, feature stores, or background jobs using the same data set.

MySQL

MySQL shines in read-heavy workloads and simple schema designs. Managed offerings like Aurora MySQL deliver good performance, but branching or fast cloning is still awkward. Migrating away from MySQL’s limited JSON features or lack of window functions can be painful later.

Use when: you have a legacy app already optimized for MySQL or you rely on tooling that only supports MySQL.

DynamoDB / Document stores

Document databases excel at huge key-value workloads with unpredictable traffic patterns. They are schema-less and scale horizontally, but they trade consistency, ad-hoc querying, and transactions for throughput. Rebuilding relational workflows on top of them often results in complex code.

Use when: you need unbounded write throughput and your access patterns are well defined (e.g., session stores, IoT metrics, caching layers).

How teams transition

We often see startups begin on Postgres, hit scale, then split into multiple specialized databases (search, analytics, vector). Pixetric delays that split by giving you elastic compute, read replicas in multiple regions, and branchable environments without leaving the Postgres ecosystem.

If you are evaluating database options, start with a list of requirements: consistency model, expected query patterns, data volume growth, and compliance needs. From there it becomes easier to see whether a general-purpose relational database like Pixetric or a specialized datastore is the better fit.