Luke Varney has now scored twice as many goals against Derby than he did for the Rams in over two-and-a-half years for the club
Ipswich Town won away from home for the first time in the Championship this season as Derby County missed a host of opportunities.
Bartosz Bialkowski made three good saves to keep Derby out in a first half that the home side dominated.
Luke Varney gave Ipswich the lead early in the second half with his side's first real effort when Scott Carson failed to keep out his long-range shot.
The result means Derby have still only scored one league goal this season.
Derby move out of the bottom three by virtue of goal difference, despite having lost for the third successive match, while Ipswich move up to ninth place.
Bialkowski made a great save from Matej Vydra early on before keeping out Craig Bryson's drive from the edge of the box and then stopping James Wilson's effort from long range at the end of the half.
Ipswich manager Mick McCarthy made two half-time changes, bringing on Tom Lawrence and Varney, who gave his side the lead eight minutes after his introduction.
Former England goalkeeper Carson somehow let the ball creep into the net despite getting two hands to the effort.
It was a first goal of the season for Varney, who scored just twice in over two-and-a-half years as a Derby player earlier in his career.
Derby tried to break Ipswich's resistance but a combination of brave defending and wasteful finishing - Darren Bent and Will Hughes both missed the target with decent efforts, while Bialkowski made a great save from Nick Blackman in stoppage-time - saw Ipswich come away with the points.
What the managers said
Ipswich manager Mick McCarthy: "We've mugged them to be fair. They were better than us, they dominated the first half and for 10 minutes we were hanging on.
"But it's all about the stuff I preach to the players and sometimes supporters don't like it when I talk about being resilient and tough, hard working and putting a shift in and it gets ridiculed a bit, but without it you get nothing for me.
"We've shown all those qualities tonight and we got blocks in and headers out and they were better, they played better than us but they couldn't score."
Derby manager Nigel Pearson: "Mick said to me before the game he felt they'd been mugged on Friday and I think they've probably done that to us.
"Of course it's a disappointing night and it's difficult to sell the idea that's okay when you are losing games and to score one goal in the league is a poor return, but I thought the players deserved to win the game.
"I thought they played exceptionally well. I felt for the fans and the players but the good thing was I think the fans could see what the players are about and they stuck with them."
- Published14 January 2018
- Published7 June 2019
