Why Is Ruby on Rails Perfect for Marketplace Development?

The last several decades have been marked by the rise of different marketplaces. Airbnb, Fiverr, Etsy, and Groupon are on everyone’s lips. That's not surprising that the idea of launching a second Amazon or eBay seems so appealing.

To win the ecommerce race, entrepreneurs focus on providing an excellent customer experience and building fast-loading and scalable websites. Besides, business owners take various security measures to protect their customers’ sensitive information. This way, they can gain clients’ trust and boost sales.

When building a custom marketplace, what technology stack is best to achieve all these goals? Our answer is simple: Ruby on Rails (RoR). In this article, we will fill you in on the Ruby on Rails marketplace development. At Codica, we are passionate fans of this framework and have built marketplace websites with its help. Learn about the key advantages of RoR for building a marketplace, and you’ll understand why thriving marketplace companies choose this framework. Let’s get into it.

About Ruby on Rails

The Ruby on Rails framework was introduced around twenty years ago. It is based on the programming language Ruby. David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) developed RoR while working on the Basecamp collaboration suite. DHH admitted that he wanted to allow programmers to focus on the creative endeavor more than the complex part of coding. So, he created a framework with intuitive, compact, and easy-to-understand syntax. It allows developers to write less code and thus increases their productivity.

The philosophy of Ruby on Rails rests on several principles. Let’s take a closer look at each of them:

• DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself). Lessen the amount of repetition of software patterns. Replace them with abstractions or use data normalization to prevent redundancy.
• Fat models, skinny controllers. Place the most of application logic within the model. Leave the controller light to the max.
• Convention over configuration. Specify the unconventional aspects of an app only. Don’t create your own rules.
• One-person framework. You can create a fully functional application without a large team or extensive resources.

The Ruby on Rails framework is popular worldwide and is widely used to build various solutions across multiple domains. Currently, there are 770,509 live websites built with RoR.

The framework is often used to solve development issues for different industries, including online marketplace development. The most famous marketplace platforms based on RoR are Airbnb, Fiverr, Shopify, and Couchsurfing.

When you should opt for Ruby on Rails marketplace development

Ruby on Rails has a number of benefits that enhance your marketplace’s performance, usability, and security. So, we recommend you use this framework in the following cases.

1. You want to cut development time

Ruby on Rails can reduce marketplace development time by 25-50% compared to other well-known frameworks, which is considerable for startups. That’s all thanks to a lean code base, modular design, and object orientation of Ruby programming language.

Another reason to use the services of a Ruby on Rails development company is the great number of Ruby gems. These free, open-source libraries offer particular functionality. So, if you want to add a specific marketplace feature, your development team will not have to write it from scratch. All it takes is to use a particular gem. As a result, Ruby on Rails marketplace development time is reduced dramatically.

Let’s take a look at the total number of Ruby gems and their downloads:

For any must-have functionality of your ecommerce platform, you can find the following useful gems.

Payment gateways:

• stripe: integration with the Stripe payment platform.
• activemerchant: payment abstraction library supporting multiple gateways.

Shipping:

• easypost: multi-carrier shipping API for carrier communication.

Financial management:

• money-rails: handling money and currency conversion.

Product management:

• friendly_id: readable URLs for products.
• ancestry: managing tree-like structures for product categories.

Analytics and reporting:

• ahoy_matey: tracking visits and events for analytics.

Search and filtering:

• elastic-enterprise-search: advanced search capabilities.
• has_scope: simplifying filtering based on resource scopes.

Order management:

• aasm: adding state machines for order states.

As you can see, there are many ready solutions that can speed up launching your ecommerce website. Of course, an experienced Ruby on Rails development company knows them all and will recommend the best options for your particular project.

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2. Security of payment information is your top priority

As Statista forecasts, ecommerce retail sales will reach over $6.3 trillion in 2024. These figures look very promising. They mean that the popularity of online marketplaces will only grow.

The success of ecommerce platforms made them a sweet spot for cybercriminals.

Such fraudsters can exploit gaps in the security of your ecommerce platform in several ways. First, they can create malware to gain full access to all data on your system.

Besides, your customers may face credit card fraud and e-skimming. The latter means capturing customers’ payment information in real-time when they get to the payment page.

The mentioned security threats may result in lost revenue. However, you can suffer from even bigger reputational damage: you may lose the trust and confidence of your shoppers. To avoid these potential negative effects, make data security your top priority.

That’s when Ruby on Rails marketplace development becomes the best choice. This framework offers in-built security measures. You do not have to worry about Cross-Site Scripting, SQL injection, and Cross-Site Request Forgery. With the RoR, your marketplace will resist the most common threats.

Therefore, a professional Ruby on Rails development company will help you build a reliable marketplace with secure data processing and payment options.

3. You search for efficient ways to reduce expenses

The launch of an online marketplace can be an expensive project. This forces business owners to seek ways to keep marketplace development costs down. Luckily, with Ruby on Rails marketplace development, you can reduce expenses.

For starters, RoR is an open-source framework, which means it is totally free. Also, it is compatible with many free databases and servers.

In addition to free gems, RoR developers can use a wide variety of free library extensions and utility classes.

Finally, this technology makes rapid prototyping possible. It means you can launch a minimum viable product for your ecommerce solution within a short time period. You can quickly show your marketplace MVP to investors and potential users to get valuable feedback. After that, the Ruby on Rails development company you partner with will know what should be added/modified/removed from your website.

An MVP can help you reduce the final cost of online and multi-vendor marketplace development services. For example, when building a minimum viable product, developers do not have to implement all the functionality. Therefore, your Ruby on Rails development company will need less time to complete the project. As a result, their services will be less expensive.

Read also: B2B Marketplace: Definition, Features, and Development Guide

4. You consider the potential growth of your marketplace

Eventually, your online marketplace will start growing. Given that, make sure that your ecommerce website will be able to maintain high traffic. You should prepare beforehand for increased loads and a growing number of requests from marketplace customers.

Ruby on Rails's scalability is another benefit of the framework. Let’s examine the specific figures that prove this fact.

• Shopify processed more than 1.27 million requests per second at its peak;
• Github can boast over 100 million developers and more than 420 million repositories;
• Airbnb hosts over 7.7 million listings in more than 220 countries.

As you have guessed, all those platforms harness the power of Ruby on Rails marketplace development.

However, the chosen framework is not the only factor responsible for your ecommerce website’s scalability. You should also consider the server's capacity and database architecture, as well as the deployment strategy.

Further reading: Top Online Marketplace Trends to Watch Out for in 2024

5. You want to attract talented developers to your project

What is the key to the successful launch of a marketplace website? To a great extent, it is the IT vendor's experience and proficiency. If you are looking for talented and skilled specialists, think of turning to a Ruby on Rails development company. Thus, you will get a fast, scalable, and secure ecommerce platform.

What makes RoR developers such great specialists? In truth, Ruby is not the easiest programming language to learn. Therefore, developers need to master other web technologies first, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, HTTP, and REST paradigms. After that, developers can proceed to learn Ruby and Ruby on Rails to reveal their full potential.

Programming experience alone is not enough for Ruby on Rails marketplace development. Building an ecommerce project that will stand out from competitors and bring unique value to consumers requires dedication and passion for work. These qualities distinguish RoR developers from other coders. Their passion and dedication help create top-notch online and multi-vendor marketplace solutions. So, their customers are satisfied with excellent Ruby on Rails development services.

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Best examples of Ruby on Rails marketplaces

Now, let’s examine the most famous marketplaces built on Ruby on Rails. Their success stories will show you why it is a good idea to partner with a Ruby on Rails development company to build your ecommerce marketplace platform.

Shopify

This is a well-structured and user-friendly ecommerce platform. Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake founded it in 2004. It enables business owners to launch and manage online stores with helpful marketplace integrations.

In 2004, Tobias Lütke decided to launch an online store that offered snowboard products. He chose Ruby on Rails marketplace development for his project. At this time, the framework has just emerged. So Lütke joined David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of RoR, and started making his contribution to Ruby on Rails. At the same time, he was working on creating the Shopify platform.

Shopify still gets the most out of Ruby on Rails development. The majority of their projects are built with this framework.

Over the last few years, Shopify has achieved fantastic results. The company has opened over 4.4 million online stores and has $7.1 billion in annual revenue in 2023. Their staff exceeds 8,300 employees.

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Fiverr

This is a freelance services marketplace that Micha Kaufman and Shai Wininger launched in 2010. They aimed to build a platform connecting companies and entrepreneurs with freelance talents.

Fiverr is noted for its simple marketplace design. Users will not face any issues with buying or selling services there. This clarity became possible owing to the combination of different technologies, and Ruby on Rails development holds a valuable place among them.

Today, 3.42 million buyers use Fiverr across 500 different categories. These include legal consulting, technical writing, craft lessons, lead generation, and more. The company reported earning $361.4 million in revenue in 2023.

Airbnb

This is one of the most popular peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms for renting and leasing accommodations. Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky founded it in 2008. The marketplace is designed to offer guests a place to stay and a unique traveling experience.

Why did Airbnb opt for Ruby on Rails marketplace development? One of the key reasons is rapid development. It allowed them to cut costs significantly and launch their niche platform in no time.

Specific figures easily prove Airbnb's huge popularity. For example, the platform has 5 million hosts and has hosted over 1.5 billion guests. The company has also opened 26 offices worldwide.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are several reasons why you should invest in Ruby on Rails marketplace development. These are security, cost-efficiency, scalability, and reduced development time.

If you are looking for a reliable Ruby on Rails development company, feel free to contact us. We have built multiple online marketplaces with RoR, and we will be happy to build one for you.