---
title: "Why Upgrade from Community to Enterprise"
publish_date: 2025-03-27
updated_date: 2025-04-10
---

# Why Upgrade from Community to Enterprise

Selecting the optimal database solution is a critical decision for any organization. Evaluating an open source database versus an enterprise solution comes down to a balance between cost and functionality. MariaDB Community Server provides a cost-effective way to explore the capabilities of the MariaDB database without significant upfront investment. However, for mission-critical applications requiring enhanced features, robust support and production-grade reliability, MariaDB Enterprise Platform is the optimal choice, allowing you to gain valuable time and focus on your core business.









## Benefits of MariaDB Enterprise Platform



### Enterprise-Grade Reliability

MariaDB Enterprise Platform is built with a focus on stability and uptime. It undergoes rigorous testing and is designed to handle production workloads with minimal downtime.





#### Automated failure management

MariaDB MaxScale, an essential component of the Enterprise Platform, ensures high availability by automatically promoting replicas and migrating connections in the event of a primary database failure or outage.





#### Fully secured clustered environment

MariaDB Cluster, powered by Galera, ensures complete data security by default, encrypting communication between nodes, the data cache and data stored on disk using SSL/TLS.





#### Enterprise-grade database security

MariaDB Enterprise Platform is production-ready with preconfigured security and durability settings, including an enterprise audit plugin, disabled remote root and anonymous access, and disabled non-GA plugins.











### Designed for Extended Lifespan and Sustainability

MariaDB Enterprise Server, the core database server for MariaDB Enterprise Platform, is engineered for longevity, leading to enhanced sustainability and decreased technical debt.





#### Reduce the need for major upgrades

Each Enterprise Server release series has a maintenance period of up to 8 years (versus 3 years for MariaDB Community Server).





#### Access to new features without upgrading

Critical features and bug fixes are backported, giving you access to new features without the need for major version upgrades.







### Business-Critical Technical Support

MariaDB Enterprise Platform gives you peace of mind with enhanced, reliable technical support.









#### World-class technical support

24/7 access to a dedicated team of global support engineers with guaranteed SLAs.





#### Prioritized bug fixes and hot fixes

Enterprise users receive priority bug fixes and exclusive access to custom hotfix builds.





#### Personalized support options

Multiple support options offer flexibility to choose what’s right for your organization. Premium tier includes quarterly executive review, faster guaranteed response times (SLAs), a dedicated premium support engineer and more.







### Enhanced Database Performance

Unlock the power of enterprise-only features in MariaDB Enterprise Platform to boost performance and drive business growth.









#### Streamlined change management

Test and manage changes without impacting production with enterprise-exclusive  
features such as Workload Capture and Replay, or without moving data to test  
environments with the Diff Router.





#### Reduced impact of DDL in clustered topology

Significantly reduces the impact of data definition language (DDL) statements on the cluster with non-blocking DDL statements.





#### Distributed transactions across systems

Support for transactions distributed over multiple systems even in clustered environments, through XA transactions.









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## Enterprise Add-Ons







### Enterprise Audit 

Provides detailed, connection-based auditing on all changes to audit configuration.







### Enterprise Backup

Perform online backups with little to no impact, allowing writes and schema changes during backups.







### Enterprise Federation

Federate access to a variety of databases with ease utilizing ODBC to remote databases.











### Enterprise Cluster

Encrypts transaction buffers, performs non-blocking DDL replication and includes a “black box” for easier troubleshooting – run secure multi-master clusters uninterrupted.







### HashiCorp Vault

Delegates key management for encrypted tables to a HashiCorp Vault deployment to support modern security standards – manage encryption keys outside of the database.









![Community Server vs. Enterprise Platform comparison chart]()











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## Ready to Upgrade?

Contact us to upgrade to MariaDB Enterprise Platform today!

[Contact Us](https://staging-mdb.com/contact/)