Our first database driven web sites used MS Access as a backend, but we quickly (late 90's) moved to MS SQL.
Cost was always an issue of course but the release of SQL Express (and the subsequent increases in allowed db capacity mean that this is now (for most users) a cost effective database solution.
We can build, maintain, support and host MS SQL database applications - if you have one in mind, please get in touch.
We can support any of the many iterations: SQL 2000, SQL 2005, SQL 2008 and of course SQL 2012. We can also port applications from MS Access to MSSQL, Excell to SQL and of course from MSSQL to MySQL.