Our preferred list of commonly used Ruby gems, tools & services we like to use for our Rails platforms.
Pricing below are for a small to medium sized production application with more than 100 active users. Most external service's pricing are based on usage so will vary based on popularity of the app.
| Name | Details | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| PostgreSQL | Our primary SQL database for record storage. | |
| Redis | Used for cache, jobs queue. | |
| Rails supported file record storage. | ||
| Filestack | We prefer Filestack to handle all security and manage the file upload experience where uploading files is a cruitial part of the application. | from $49/mo |
| Name | Details | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Heroku | Fully managed Platform as a Service (PaaS) by Salesforce. HIPAA, ISO & SOC complient hosting services. 1x standard web dyno, 1x standard worker dyno. | from $50/mo |
| Heroku Postgres | Fully managed database as a service. | from $9/mo |
| Heroku Redis | Redis as a service. | from $0/mo |
| Heroku Scheduler | Tasks that need to run at regular intravels or at a particualr time everyday. | free |
| Sidekiq | Simple & efficient background processing. | |
| Rack Canonical Host | Redirect to the primary domain for the application. | |
| Rack::Timeout | Timeout app so we can get notified before Heroku kills the request that runs over 30s. | |
| SendGrid | Transactional email delivery. | from $15/mo |
| Name | Details | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | DNS service with request monitoring, DDoS protection and other security features. | from $0/mo |
| HoneyBadger | Production app monitoring, crash reporting & notifications. | from $0/mo |
| Skylight | App performance monitoring & insights to optomise for faster app response. | from $20/mo |
| Papertrail | Server logs archive and management. | from $8/mo |
| Lograge | Tame Rails' request logging. | |
| Lograge::Sql | Extension to Lograge gem for taming SQL queries. | |
| Logstop | Remove personally identifiable information (PII) out of logs. |
| Name | Details | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Sqreen | Application level security platform. | from $0/mo |
| Rack::Attack | Block and throttle abusive requests. | |
| Devise Security | Devise gem extension to add additional security features for modern web applications. | |
| Lockbox | Database fields encryption. | |
| Blind Index | Securely search encrypted database fields. | |
| StrongPassword | Password strength validation. Don't allow weak passwords. | |
| ValidEmail2 | Validate email address, prevent disposable emails and blacklist domains. |
| Name | Details | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Devise | User authentication system. | |
| OmniAuth | External provider authentication. e.g. Connect with Google, Facebook, etc. | |
| Pundit | User authorization system. | |
| Pretender | Login as any user in the platform as an admin. |
| Name | Details | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| FriendlyId | Hide database row IDs and produce SEO friendly URLs. | |
| PaperTrail | Track changes to our records for auditing and versioning. | |
| Paranoia | Soft delete records. | |
| AASM | State machine. |
| Name | Details | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| HAML | HTML abstraction markup language to keep the code simple and indented like Ruby. | |
| SASS | Rails built-in support for CSS with superpowers. | |
| Pagy | Pagination. | |
| Simple Form | Form components & styling. | |
| High Voltage | Static pages. | |
| MetaTags | Page titles, descriptions and meta tags for SEO. | |
| SitemapGenerator | Generate sitemaps for search engines. | |
| Gon | Pass data as variables from backend to Javascript. | |
| Hotwire: Turbo | Speed of single-page web application. | |
| Hotwire: Stimulus | Modest JavaScript framework for HTML. |
| Name | Details | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Option 1: Forst Admin | Admin panel as a service. | from $0/mo |
| Option 2: Active Admin & Addons | Admin panel as part of the Rails app. |
| Name | Details | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Rubocop | Ruby static code analyzer and code formatter. Install auto-correct plugin in your code editor. | |
| Deep Source | Automated code review & static code analysis. Setup Rubycop, Breakman and other code review plugins for each PR. | from $0/mo |
| Strong Migrations | Catch unsafe migrations in development. | |
| Bullet | Improve app performance by reducing the number of queries it makes. |
| Name | Details | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| RSpec | Testing framework. | |
| factory_bot | Define model patters and strategies for testing. | |
| Faker | Mock test data. | |
| Shoulda Matchers | One-liner common Rails functionality tests helper. | |
| Capybara | User acceptance testing by simulating how real users would interact with our app. | |
| GitHub Actions | Continuous Integration (CI) setup for each PR. | 3,000 mins/mo included with GitHub subscription. |
| Name | Details | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub Teams | Codebase, version control & developer hub. | $4 per user/mo |
| Better Errors | Better and more useful error pages. | |
| Awesome Print | Pretty print logs and indentation. | |
| Annotate | Add summarizing schema as comments for quick reference at the top of files. | |
| Letter Opener | Open and view emails in the browser in development. |