Sql 2014 Express -

The biggest dealbreaker. Once your data hits ~9.5GB, you must migrate to Standard or another RDBMS.

Today, SQL 2014 Express lives in a strange purgatory. Its mainstream support is dead; its extended support has faded. It exists now as "zombie infrastructure." It powers the point-of-sale systems in old retail stores. It runs the backend of that inventory management software at the local mechanic’s shop that hasn't updated Windows in a decade. It is the bedrock of forgotten corners of the internet, humming along on dusty servers, forgotten until it crashes. sql 2014 express

While it reached its extended end-of-life on July 9, 2024 , it remains in use within many legacy environments and small business systems. The biggest dealbreaker

Comes with SQL Server Management Studio (separate download in later versions, but bundled here). SSMS 2014 is stable and efficient. Its mainstream support is dead; its extended support

Full T-SQL support, stored procedures, views, triggers – the same core engine as paid editions.

Not a bottleneck for small apps, but heavy concurrent queries will suffer.