MariaDB began in 2009 as a fork of MySQL, created by MySQL’s original developers. For most websites they’re interchangeable.
| MySQL | MariaDB | |
|---|---|---|
| Developed by | Oracle | MariaDB Foundation and community |
| Licence | Open source (with commercial editions) | Open source |
| Client tools and PHP drivers | Same | Same |
| WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Laravel | Supported | Supported |
| phpMyAdmin | Works | Works |
Why hosting uses the terms together
Control panels, including DirectAdmin, still call the section MySQL Management whichever engine runs underneath. Applications connect the same way with mysqli or PDO.
Where they differ
- Newer features have diverged: some JSON functions, window function details, system tables and default authentication methods differ.
- Very new MySQL-only syntax in a database dump can fail to import into MariaDB, or the reverse. The most common case is a collation such as
utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci, which is MySQL 8-specific.
Fixing a collation import error
If an import fails with Unknown collation: 'utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci', replace it in the SQL file with utf8mb4_unicode_ci and import again. How to import a database with phpMyAdmin
Which one am I using?
In phpMyAdmin’s home screen, the database server section shows the server type and version.
Every Traxio account includes a MySQL database with phpMyAdmin. If you’re still choosing a host, PHP and MySQL hosting is free for 30 days, then £0.99 a month.