Shopify’s Success in Using RoR for its One Million Plus Users
Tags: Pros And Cons, Apps, Ruby on Rails, Shopify, Advantages

Most of us have used Shopify to buy something for our home, a personal item, or any useful tool. Shopify was started in 2004 by three Canadians, inspired by a poor online shopping experience with snowboarding equipment. From then until now, it has achieved great recognition and this year reached more than 1 million users. By 2021, global e-commerce is forecast to be $4.97 trillion — almost a 400% increase in seven years.

Shopify has become an inspiring example of a complex, well-structured, and user-friendly e-commerce platform made with Ruby on Rails (RoR). And it’s absolutely rocking. In short, it’s a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that provides entrepreneurs with the opportunity to create a secure online shop with a broad range of functionality and choose from about 100 payment gateways. For advanced users, there’s also an opportunity to edit design templates.

Source: Shopify data for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

But why does Shopify use Ruby on Rails?

Ruby on Rails is a web development framework for building web applications. Even though RoR has reached its maturity, it’s still preferred by developers all over the world.

Shopify was launched when RoR was at its most popular. It seemed to be a promising framework at the time, and it is. RoR has allowed Shopify to grow at the same time as the number of its users has increased, it is called scalability. The architecture of an RoR application has great scalability potential due to its modularity, which means the system can be divided into engines, modules, and gems. It also conforms very well to the twelve factor app principles, which allow it to be scaled horizontally in a natural way.

This fact can be well appreciated when popular Platforms as a Service (Paas), such as Heroku, help you to scale the applications by just clicking a few buttons or interacting with simple slider control.

Why is RoR relevant in 2020?

In 2020, e-commerce solutions are in high demand. The pandemic and the need for convenience and safety has led to many companies turning to e-commerce platforms to serve their customers. The RoR framework is a highly stable, powerful platform for building an e-commerce website.

“Shopify offers a lot more than an e-commerce sales platform. This tool is more like a product database or inventory management system, allowing you to sell items on a website through channels such as Pinterest and Facebook, and in a point of sales situation. I use the portable card reader when I go to craft shows and sell items directly from the online store inventory. This tool helps me to manage inventory and sales tax collection.” — Jennifer Boaro, The Cat Ball

Using Ruby on Rails web development for e-commerce makes sense because the framework is an affordable way to build web applications. On top of that, it provides much faster development than other frameworks, so you can build B2B, B2C, and subscription-based e-commerce projects without any hassle.

If you are thinking of building an online shop, RoR is one of the best frameworks you can find, as it has lots of gems developed specifically for e-commerce. RoR has it all: helpdesks, payment gateways, email campaign platforms, and more. This is why Shopify, as well as other e-commerce platforms like Etsy and Brandless, are built in RoR.

Ruby on Rails pros and cons

At Codescrum, we have worked with HeadBox, the UK’s first online marketplace for inspiring meeting, off-site, and event spaces. It enables users to easily search, book, and pay online for venues.

Today, e-commerce with Ruby on Rails is more relevant than ever. Due to the imminent losses companies face, you may want to save money but still, reach more customers. With a mobile e-commerce app built using RoR, you can reduce the burden on your existing operations.

We have helped companies worldwide with their Ruby on Rails projects. Check out our case studies HERE.