"an even more expensive per-connection model than mysql" Did you actually run into a practical problem here, or is this theoretical? Most people get along fine

"an even more expensive per-connection model than mysql" Did you actually run into a practical problem here, or is this theoretical? Most people get along fine for a while, and when they have a problem, they use pgbouncer, which seems to solve it. "extremely painful replication, largely offloaded to third party tools" Do you have some more specific/constructive criticism here? A lot of work has gone into postgres replication over the past few years, and it's improved dramatically for some use cases. But there are many use cases for replication, so it's possible that you didn't see improvements for your use cases. FWIW, I started out with MySQL, and then tried out Postgres because of the license (MySQL was not yet GPL). After MySQL was GPLed, I used both for a while, but found the postgres community more welcoming/informative, and found postgres much more pleasant to use. At one point around 2003 I basically threw mysql away completely because I was fed up trying to do simple date manipulation to make simple reports. Postgres made it so easy and it seemed so natural -- it's really hard to use mysql afterward without getting frustrated. I'm sure there are things like that in reverse as well; e.g. mysql has the ON DUPLICATE KEY clause, but to me it still didn't add up to a pleasant/productive experience.