Why Do Startups Love Ruby on Rails?

Why do so many startups choose Ruby on Rails over other technologies?

It’s a startup-friendly, cost-effective, flexible, and simple web development solution.

Some of the biggest names in the tech world chose Rails to start with. Some of them being: Airbnb, GitHub, GitLab, Shopify, Hulu.

When startups begin deciding what technology to work with. They’re probably looking for these traits, among others:

• Time efficiency
• Lower costs
• Great architecture
• Quality
• Security
• Great community

Time efficiency

When it comes to developing an app as fast as possible, Rails has you covered.

With all the features, plugins, and ready-made modules that come integrated with Rails, time will always be on your side. Compared to other frameworks, Rails speeds up the development process by 30%-40%.

It makes web development less stressful as it allows developers to write less code. Which always results in increased productivity and organization growth.

That is why Rails will allow startups to beat their competition. It will allow them to finish in much less time. And, release their product before their market competitors.

Lower costs

One of the biggest goals of a startup is to keep its spendings as small as possible, especially in the beginning.

That’s why Rails is a great option. It’s completely open-source and it’s distributed under the MIT license. This means that startups don’t have to spend a dime on the actual framework.

Also, the framework supports a wide range of functionalities. Through its extensive library of ‘gems’.

Great architecture

Rails development operates on the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture.

This makes it easy to separate the code into methods relating to

• data access (Model)
• rendering data to the user (View)
• business logic (Controller)

The MVC architecture lets the developer create code that is testable, and maintainable.

It also enables different developers to work on different parts of the app, at the same time.

Quality

Being a startup, having a great user experience is a must. Bugs and errors early on in the development process question the quality and efficiency of the project. That is one of the reasons why startups use Rails.

The Rails community encourages developers to build apps using TDD (Test Driven Development), and BDD (Behavior Driven Development).

With these approaches, developers first write automated tests to ensure an error-free environment. Thus, it is easy to avoid bugs and reduce costs on debugging or development.

Security

Security features are already built-in and Rails is secure by default. Current versions have built-in mechanisms to stop hackers and malicious activities.

Yet, relying only on built-in features is not advisable! It does not mean that the framework is secure.

The community regularly identifies security weaknesses and proposes corresponding solutions. Also, they actively work to identify and patch new vulnerabilities as they come along.

So, if you happen to deal with certain security issues in Rails. You can expect to find effective solutions easily.

And having a great community is why Rails is a great option.

Great community

This will not initially speed up the development process, but it will help the startup in the long run.

They can rest assured that when any issues do come up, a community willing to help is waiting for them.

There is also no need to reinvent the wheel!

With the community comes code that is already written. Reusable pieces of code, or as we like to call them — gems. Gems are pieces of code that other developers wrote and decided to share with the world. It is easy to find solutions that will suit the startups’ needs and help them achieve their goal.

Conclusion

Rails is a fast, secure, and affordable framework. It has had a bright past and is most likely destined for a bright future.

For most startups Rails is the perfect solution. Because Rails apps can be developed so quickly and easily. The technology supports startup growth and helps in keeping time to market short.

In the end, the main goal of a startup is to have a product set up and running as soon as possible. Choosing Rails will allow them to achieve that goal.