When comparing Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) vs Toad, the Slant community recommends Toad for most people. In the question“What are the best MySQL client applications for Windows?” Toad is ranked 8th while Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Toad is:
Toad is maintained by Dell and has great community support.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Can work for other databases if Linked Servers are used
Pro Great for SQL Server
Pro Reliable
Toad is maintained by Dell and has great community support.
Pro Free
Toad is free to use.
Cons
Con Bloated
SSMS eats up a lot of disk space and memory, but Microsoft seems to have addressed the issue in the newest version, quote "The current size of the bundle is less than half of what SSMS 17.x is (~400 MB). The size will eventually grow a little when the IS components are added back to SSMS, but it should not be as large as it used to be."
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssms/sql-server-management-studio-changelog-ssms?view=sql-server-2017
Con Doesn't natively support other databases
SSMS is aimed at SQL Server.
Use of Linked Servers will give you some access to query other types of DBs using the tool, but this is a workaround.
Con Fewer features
Still some more features are required to add. Other than that its perfectly fine.
Con No built-in SSH tunneling
Toad currently doesn't provide built-in SSH tunneling.