Comment by smcleod

From many years of hosting both - MySQL seems easier at first but there are so, so many problems with its internal design that hide problems until its too late. PostgreSQL in my eyes is engineered in a much smarter way and has sensible defaults. PostgreSQL won't implement something unless it's _going to work_ and work properly. MySQL is analogous to software like Drupal and 'hobbiest' projects that have grown organically without proper engineering - and when it's too late you realise you're missing data, MySQL makes it easy to do things the wrong way, PostgreSQL enforces you do things the right way. We've also found that PostgreSQL performance far outshines MySQL as long as you've setup basic things like shared buffer sizes etc correctly.