--- title: Ruby on Rails Reviews meta_title: 'Ruby on Rails Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 83 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Ruby on Rails works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.5 review_count: 83 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-07' parent_category: name: Web Frameworks url: https://www.g2.com/categories/web-frameworks --- # Ruby on Rails Reviews **Vendor:** Open Source Initiative (OSI) **Category:** [Other Web Frameworks Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/other-web-frameworks) **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 83 ## About Ruby on Rails Ruby on Rails, commonly referred to as Rails, is an open-source server-side web application framework written in the Ruby programming language. It follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern, providing default structures for databases, web services, and web pages. Rails emphasizes the use of well-known software engineering principles such as Convention over Configuration (CoC) and Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY), aiming to simplify and accelerate the development of database-driven web applications. Key Features and Functionality: - Active Record: An object-relational mapping (ORM) layer that simplifies database interactions by representing tables as classes and rows as objects, allowing developers to perform database operations using Ruby code. - Action Pack: A component that combines the controller and view layers of the MVC framework, facilitating the handling of web requests and rendering of responses. - Active Support: A collection of utility classes and standard library extensions that enhance the Ruby language, providing additional functionalities to simplify coding tasks. - Action Mailer: A framework for designing email services, enabling the creation and delivery of emails from a Rails application. - Convention over Configuration (CoC): Rails reduces the need for explicit configuration by following established conventions, allowing developers to focus on application logic rather than boilerplate code. - Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY): This principle encourages the reduction of code duplication, promoting maintainability and scalability by ensuring that each piece of information has a single, unambiguous representation within the system. Primary Value and Problem Solving: Ruby on Rails streamlines the web development process by providing a comprehensive framework that integrates seamlessly with databases and web services. By adhering to the CoC and DRY principles, Rails minimizes the amount of code developers need to write, reducing the likelihood of errors and enhancing productivity. Its modular design and extensive library of gems (plugins) allow for rapid development and easy customization, making it an ideal choice for startups and enterprises aiming to build robust, scalable web applications efficiently. ## Ruby on Rails Reviews ### 1. Popular web framework with a quality code base, slow run time and less control over the framework **Rating:** 2.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ankita C. | Software Developer, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 28, 2022 **What do you like best about Ruby on Rails?** RoR makes the language easier to learn for novices and it has better code readability. It encourages avoiding code duplication and provides a standard structure for web apps, where all the common patterns are taken care of. The MVC principle promotes modularity and extensibility of the application. It enables the development of features incredibly fast thus productivity is fast. There are lots of publicly available gems (3rd party libraries) to help to build a web app. RoR has a huge active community of developers to ask for help and use their code snippets. **What do you dislike about Ruby on Rails?** It can be hard to find good documentation. RoR has a slow runtime process that makes it hard to scale the RoR application. The boot time can be really slow depending on the gems and dependencies. Developers don't have total control over the framework architecture, and modules. Lack of stability because it's constantly evolving and this makes it challenging to learn for beginners because you always have to be up-to-date. **Recommendations to others considering Ruby on Rails:** Every framework has its own pros and cons. Read it carefully before deciding your choice of framework to use in your application. **What problems is Ruby on Rails solving and how is that benefiting you?** RoR was to made to speed up the development process thus it makes it beneficial for projects that have limited time. RoR is perfect for MVPs and small, and medium websites. The Don't Repeat Yorself principle makes RoR projects efficient to maintain. It can be easily extended with new features. ### 2. Good for prototyping, terrible for scalability **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Guy E. | Chief Technology Officer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 31, 2017 **What do you like best about Ruby on Rails?** There is a wealth of documentation and community support out there for getting up to speed with Ruby on Rails (RoR) quickly. Most of the ideas you can think of for a new application already have gems / plugins / tutorials that show you exactly how to get what you want without writing a lot of code. In many cases, you can write some code that is your best guess as to how something should work, and it will cover 80% of the cases you need to handle, thus giving you a minimally viable product (MVP) you can bring to market quickly. **What do you dislike about Ruby on Rails?** Although you can get 80% of what you want quickly, the remaining 20% takes 2x to 4x more time to get than with any other solution we've tried. Both Ruby (the language) and Rails (the framework) were written assuming that they would be used only very specific ways. As your project -- no matter what project it is -- grows, those assumptions no longer fit your use case, and you find yourself fighting the language and framework more than it is helping you. RoR makes it very easy to keep adding scope to your MVP to the point where you have so much technical debt that you end up having to rewrite everything. What was once fast and easy for you to iterate on is now very slow and hard to maintain. It is very easy to get into but hard to master; consequently, it's hard to find qualified RoR talent without paying 2x what it costs for Java Enterprise developers. In short, RoR does not scale as your business scales; it becomes an albatross. Lastly, we hate that it only really runs well on Linux. It barely runs at all on Windows, requiring our team members that use Windows to run a VM just to work with Rails. **Recommendations to others considering Ruby on Rails:** Only use Ruby on Rails for prototyping / creating a minimally viable product. Plan for the right time to start transitioning away from RoR as your product / project grows. RoR is good as "glue" between other larger services, but not as an enterprise product. Don't fall into the common trap of continuing to add more and more functionality to your MVP until it eventually becomes a large, slow, difficult to maintain monolith that scales poorly. **What problems is Ruby on Rails solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our business needed a way to quickly turn an e-commerce idea into a minimally viable product we could start selling immediately. It was a good fit for our start-up to see if our idea(s) had legs, and to pivot quickly as we found our product-market fit. ## Ruby on Rails Discussions - [What is Ruby on Rails used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-ruby-on-rails-used-for) - 1 comment - [Is Ruby on Rails front end?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-ruby-on-rails-front-end) - 1 comment - [View Ruby on Rails pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/ruby-on-rails/reviews?filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=2§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-09+17%3A48%3A15+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=649b5111-635d-4185-b05b-942d387ab5a4&secure%5Btoken%5D=aa3dc46da7c6c17358ed0789134eaa5ebb624138be9ef6685b5dccaff264d955&format=llm_user) ## Top Ruby on Rails Alternatives - [ASP.NET](https://www.g2.com/products/asp-net/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (54 reviews) - [JQuery UI](https://www.g2.com/products/jquery-ui/reviews) - 3.6/5.0 (27 reviews) - [handlebars](https://www.g2.com/products/handlebars/reviews) - 3.9/5.0 (12 reviews)