Rails Application Support & Maintenance

Software is an investment for your business; now that your web application is launched, you need to ensure it's continuing to perform its best. Without dedicated support, bugs stack up and systems become outdated, all of which can introduce security concerns. When you don't have an in-house team providing support, updates turn into fire drills, can be pricey, and lack thoughtful consideration of the entire product.

thoughtbot, one of the world's most experienced Rails development teams, is here to help and has a part-time support and maintenance team dedicated to supporting Rails applications long-term.

Let's chat about your needs

Quote from Rain

The best part was that we got to work closely with very talented developers and great communicators at thoughtbot. They had a good process in place. Everything was tested. They were very methodical about setting us up with the best structure for the app.

Joseph Dallago
Co-Founder & CEO, Rain

we wrote the book, the podcast, the guides...

Tap into 16+ years of Rails expertise whenever you need to

It's critical to proactively maintain and improve your Ruby on Rails application, but hiring talented Ruby developers may not be an option. Partnering with thoughtbot allows you to tap the expertise we are most well known for - Ruby on Rails - whenever a need arises. What sets our maintenance team apart is we proactively suggest improvements, and come to you with ideas and suggestions, as we continuously look for ways to make maintenance, scaling, and future development more efficient.

thoughtbot has been a passionate and active participant in the Ruby on Rails community since the beginning because we continuously see the competitive advantage it gives companies as they grow. We are well-known in the open-source community and have created a number of open-source libraries, including factory_bot, administrate, dotfiles, and suspenders.

How it works

A proactive, consistent partnership

We understand your business, product, and team's bandwidth ebbs and flows. The Rails Maintenance team is structured in a way that provides you with the flexibility you need. We can increase and decrease bandwidth based on your priorities.

We are also comfortable working within a monthly budget so you can project your long-term maintenance costs. We use an hourly rate to describe our team and report on progress made at the close of each week. Our most successful partnerships include standing prioritization meetings to ensure we are all on the same page and your expectations are being met.

thoughtbot can tackle

  • Ongoing feature development
  • Performance Improvements that save you money & optimize hosting
  • Code updates in line with Compliance and Security Requirements
  • Rails, Security Patches and Gem Upgrades
  • Bug Fixes
  • Modernization of Application Deployment
  • Test Coverage, Test Suite and Automated Test Improvements

Quote from TuneCore

Their proactive, independent approach was the ideal solution for this project. The end result was well-organized and was more impressive than a competing proposal.

Neil Bhay
VP of Technology, TuneCore

rails thought leadership

Check out the team's expertise

Testing Rails

Learn to test Ruby on Rails web applications from the ground up in this comprehensive guide to modern testing practices.

Test Like a Pro

Ruby Science

The canonical reference for writing fantastic Rails applications from authors who have created hundreds.

Get Scientific!

Open-Source Libraries

Some of our most popular libraries include factory_bot, administrate, dotfiles, and suspenders.

Head to github

RailsConf Presentations

thoughtbot was fortunate enough in 2022 to have a few thoughtbotters join as Rails Conf speakers.

Listen to their presentations

Our Playbook

This is our playbook. It details the best ways we've found so far for how we make successful web and mobile products.

Dive in

How to supercharge your Rails app with a code audit

During this workshop, thoughtbot shares best practices for auditing Rails codebases, and how to shift to actionable items without sacrificing speed of feature development.

View Recording

Let's Talk

How can we support your Rails application?