How Much Does It Cost to Build Web Application in Ruby on Rails?
Tags: ruby, webapp, rails
Published: 2024-01-25 06:10:26

The exact expense of building a Ruby on Rails Application will depend on the features you want in it. ROR is one of the most demanding frameworks for back-end development as it’s a complete package that can build your idea into a real-world app. If you want assistance or prototyping to bootstrap ROR is definitely an amazing alternative for your project development requirements. However, the cost of building an App using Ruby on Rails depends on different aspects like hiring ROR developers and their skillset or experience, scope and size of your project, complex features, [mobile app architecture](https://www.tatvasoft.com/outsourcing/2022/10/mobile-app-architecture.html), and other business requirements. In this blog, we will cover factors that provide approximate costing of creating a Ruby on Rails application from scratch. So, let’s dive in and understand more.

## Why choose Ruby on Rails?
Here are the five primary benefits or we can say factors because of which developers choose ROR technology for web app development:
Fast- ROR is faster in execution, hence, it saves your resources and time. It leaves the unnecessary pieces of code behind and executes the necessary ones first. Moreover, they let the development process move fast and it’s more beneficial for large projects.
Economical- While using ROR, you will just need a free OS (Linux). Mostly the DBs and servers that have to be used are also free. So, it's economical to use and provides the ideal speed, performance, and security.
Scalable- For enlarging the website because of its growth, or adding new features, ROR can help you make this work look seamless. Hence, the scalability feature of Ruby on Rails makes it a highly-recommended choice amongst developers.
Flexible- ROR provides a huge amount of Ruby libraries known as RubyGems. It’s a package management system that helps you in integrating services in your app.
Modern technology- You have to walk along with the trend if you want to be successful. Many well-known services are accepting ROR consulting. So, you can choose ROR for performing modern web development.
Now, let’s see main aspects that will affect the cost of your ROR web app.

## Factors affecting the cost of Ruby on Rails Web App development
Here’s the list of primary factors affecting the cost of building ROR web apps:
**Size and experience of the Development Team**
The experience and size of the Ruby on Rails development team you hire plays an important role in controlling the cost. If you hire highly-skilled developers, they may command more salary, and hiring more developers also increases the cost of building the project.
**Your Project’s Complexity**
Amount of complexity your app holds depends on its features, integrations, and functionality, and it’s an essential cost changer. More complex the project gets, it requires more resources and experienced developers. This leads to increased cost of the project.
**Efficient Project Management**
Sometimes ROR apps will have different parts that will require proper management to ensure that the project works well. So, you might need to partner with a project manager to make sure that your project is ready on time. You can also hire a developer team with a project manager in the team itself. It will increase the cost of your RoR project development.
**Scalability Requirements**
If your app has to manage a large group of users or requires to scale up and down rapidly, Ruby on Rails can be one of the perfect alternatives for it. RoR helps in planning and managing a scalable infrastructure, and it also affects the cost of development.
**Data Processing and Storage**
The amount of data that your app will process and handle can strongly affect its development cost. Large-scale apps with strong data storage and processing will need many additional resources to manage the data.
**User Experience and Design**
Qualitative design and strong user experience can add to the development cost. As it requires the involvement of UI/UX experts and designers, the cost rises.
**Project Timeline**
When the project has a smaller timeline or when you need speedier development, it can lead to some extra development bucks. It’s because resources will need to work overtime or you will require more developers for completing the project development earlier.
**QA and Testing**
Strong testing, QA and security measures are important but contribute to increased development costs. In the custom software project development, it’s often common to allocate from 10 to 20 % of the total budget for strong quality assurance and testing. Through this process, you can ensure a reliable and strong end product.
**Compliances**
In case your app should have certain standards or regulations, additional development is necessary that will impact the development cost.
**Maintenance and Support**
Consider the ongoing maintenance costs like timely updates, bug fixes, security maintenance, etc., are important for the healthy life of your app.
It’s essential to allocate a different budget for having this maintenance and support activities as an essential part of your app development lifecycle. As the app is used by more and more users, new errors or bugs can emerge.
Allocating a budget for enhancements and bug fixes ensures that you can address these issues to improve the user experience promptly.
**Geographic Location**
Development team impacts the cost of project development. The cost of hiring developers from different regions also changes.
For instance, if you hire developers from cities like London, NYC, etc., where the cost of living is higher, the cost of hiring them will automatically be higher. However, in developed countries like India, hiring cost of experienced RoR developers is less than other countries.
When you are hiring remote developers globally, currency exchange rates can also impact the budget of development that you have measured. Money fluctuations make contract and salary rates less or more expensive for your company.
However, there’s a rise in hiring remote development teams that has influenced cost dynamics of the project development budget as well. Companies prefer to work with a global talent pool that provides cost savings when they hire developers from locations from lower hiring costs.
Now, let’s discuss the approximate price of an app developed using RoR.

## How much does Ruby on Rails app development cost?

As we already studied the primary factors on which the cost of RoR development depends, we will now see an approximate range of website development cost. The basic cost of developing a Ruby on Rails application can be somewhere between $5000 to $10000 minimum.
After that, it depends on the complexity, features, advanced management, future maintenance and support, and other things you want to have in your project.
As this technology provides efficiency, scalability, reliability, and safety while developing an application, RoR has become of the most preferred choice for modern web app development. Popular organizations belonging to different domains like SAAS, Social networking, hospitality, and many more are using Ruby on Rails as a core technology in their architecture.

## How to build a cost-effective Ruby on Rails application?
If you encounter a dramatic rise in the budget, you can perform the following steps to decrease the development cost and make your project cost-effective.
**Lower the app’s complexity**
Make sure that you are involving only necessary features of the app. As the features increase, the development cost increases. So, take one or an half hour and think about which features aren’t useful in the beginning scenario of your project.
Keep the extra features on halt and by this way you can cut some extra cost of developing the app.
**Cut down some extra web pages**
Every page that is being developed will consume more time and resources. So, if only 5 pages are required, do not even go for 7 pages. Remove the extra 2 pages to save some bucks.
**Simplify your project design**
If your website has excessive graphics, it could look unattractive to certain users. So, make sure you use only needful graphics and animation to make your website interactive.
**You can also choose freelancers**
In case you do not want a whole team, you can hire a reliable ROR expert who can help you with developing your ideal business project.
**Choose the location wisely**
We hope that you have done thorough investigation about the location where the hiring cost is low and also developers are reliable and experienced. In this way, you can save some extra expenditure and make your ROR app development more cost-effective.

## Final Words
In the end, we hope that this article has helped you with easy understanding of what will be an approximate range of expense for building a Ruby on Rails app from scratch.