Deciding between whether or not to buy Navicat Premium for Mac at a cost of $70 or using Sequel Pro which is free, was a difficult decision believe it or not. I use Navicat on my Windows PC, but have been using Sequel Pro on my MacBook Pro.
Paid vs free: should be an easy decision to make, right? Well, not exactly.
Navicat Premium allows you to work with most database types: Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite and even Oracle. Sequel Pro from my understanding is really only for MySQL at this point in time, but other databases are planned I think.
On top of that, the interface for managing the creation of tables and databases is a lot more feature-packed than that of Sequel Pro. Managing and creating things like Stored Procedures is also a lot easier and helped with autocompleting your query code as well.
So which one should you buy?
You have to assess your needs. If you’re just working on small WordPress websites and simple web applications, then Navicat is probably overkill. Navicat is more aimed at professionals and database administrators looking to use power features of databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Sequel Pro is aimed at light database users and those who mostly deal with simple databases and need features like import and export, as well as simple query generation and writing tools.
I use Navicat because I build web applications and need to manage things like foreign keys, stored procedures and like to manage my database tables in a more visual way. I don’t always use the power features of the likes of MySQL, but it is nice to know if I do, Navicat will be there waiting.
