Durable ProgrammingYour Rails app, kept current for a price you can budget.
Hiring Rails devs is hard, and there's a lot of work to be done. Don't have your inhouse team spend time and money managing Rails upgrades, security patches, and gem versions - let us handle that, so you can focus on other projects.
Run by the expert that wrote Practical Ruby Gems and has shipped Ruby in production for more than twenty years.
Why this exists
Rails apps don't fail loudly. They rot quietly.
For founders and eng leads running a mature Rails app they can't afford to let rot: most teams don't neglect maintenance on purpose — it just never makes it to the top of the sprint. Then a dependency goes EOL, a security advisory lands, and what was an afternoon becomes a fire drill.
Unpatched vulnerabilities
Rails and its gems ship security fixes constantly. Skip a few and you're running known, exploitable bugs in production.
Upgrade debt compounds
A version behind is an afternoon. Four versions behind is a quarter-long project. Waiting only makes it cost more.
Unpredictable costs
Hourly emergency work is the most expensive way to maintain software. A flat retainer turns a wildcard into a line item.
What you get
Maintenance that actually keeps the app healthy
Every plan covers the work that keeps a Rails app secure and supportable. Higher tiers add hours, speed, and proactive engineering.
Security patching
We track Rails and gem advisories and apply fixes promptly — you don't find out about a CVE from a customer.
Dependency upkeep
Regular, tested bumps of Ruby, Rails, and gems so you never drift far enough to need a rescue project.
Monitoring & error triage
We watch exceptions and performance, and act on the ones that matter instead of letting them pile up.
Bug fixes & small changes
A standing pool of engineering hours for the steady stream of small fixes and tweaks every live app needs.
Dependency & deploy health
CI green, deploys reliable, backups verified. The unglamorous stuff that bites when it's neglected.
Access to a real expert
The same senior person each month, who learns your codebase — not a rotating ticket queue.
Plans & pricing
Pick a plan. Cancel anytime.
Flat monthly pricing. No setup fees, no minimum term. Annual billing saves 10%.
One emergency security incident or a stalled upgrade costs more than a year of Essential.
Essential
Keep a stable app secure and supported.
- ✓ Security patch monitoring & fixes
- ✓ Quarterly dependency upgrades
- ✓ Quarterly performance report
- ✓ Quarterly security report
- ✓ Dev environment upkeep (devenv.nix, devcontainers, Docker / Compose)
- ✓ ~2 pull requests / month
- ✓ Email support, 2 business-day response
- ✓ Ops & deployment scoped separately
- ✓ Same-day priority response
Standard
The right fit for most production apps.
- ✓ Everything in Essential
- ✓ Monthly dependency upgrades
- ✓ Monthly performance report
- ✓ Monthly security report
- ✓ ~6 pull requests / month
- ✓ Proactive error & performance monitoring
- ✓ Next-business-day response
- ✓ Quarterly health report & roadmap
- ✓ Ops & deployment scoped separately
Priority
For revenue-critical apps that can't wait.
- ✓ Everything in Standard
- ✓ ~10 pull requests / month
- ✓ Monthly performance report
- ✓ Monthly security report
- ✓ Same-day security response
- ✓ Performance & cost optimization work
- ✓ Direct Slack / call access
- ✓ Upgrade planning included
- ✓ Ops & deployment scoped separately
Pull requests are a rough guide to throughput, not a hard cap — a PR is one reviewable change shipped against your priorities. Roughly, that maps to up to 6 / 16 / 40 engineering hours per month across Essential / Standard / Priority. We'll flag anything bigger before we start.
Our promise: first month not worth it? Cancel, keep the health report, pay nothing further.
Month-to-month, cancel anytime. No setup fee, no minimum term.
Not sure which fits? Tell us your Rails version and traffic in the form below — we'll recommend a plan honestly, even if it's the cheapest one. Bigger or more complex apps can get a custom retainer.
How onboarding works
From sign-up to covered in about a week
Intro call & access
A 30-minute call to understand the app, then read-only access to your repo and infrastructure (NDA first). You walk away from the call knowing your top three risks.
Health assessment
We audit your Rails version, dependencies, test coverage, and known risks, and hand you a short written report — yours to keep regardless of what you decide.
Stabilize the urgent stuff
In the first month we knock out the highest-risk items — exposed CVEs, broken backups, the deploy that only works on one person's laptop — so you end month one demonstrably safer than you started.
Steady-state maintenance
Then it's the monthly rhythm: patches, upgrades, monitoring, and your pool of engineering hours — with a report so you can see where they went.
Who's doing the work
Your Rails app stays secure and current — without a full-time hire.
Durable Programming has maintained, upgraded, and rescued Ruby on Rails applications since the early days of the framework. Maintenance is core work for us, not filler between projects — which is why you can hand it off and stop thinking about it.
- ★ 20+ years of production Ruby & Rails experience
- ★ Author of published books on Ruby and Rails development
- ★ Active open-source contributors in the Ruby ecosystem
- ★ US-based engineers — no offshore handoff
“The folks at Durable Programming did an exceptional job upgrading our Rails application. Throughout the process they were responsive, patient, and communicative.”
Questions
The things people ask before signing up
What counts as a "pull request"?
One reviewable change shipped against your priorities: a bug fix, a small feature, a dependency bump, a performance tweak. The per-month numbers are a guide to throughput, not a hard quota — some PRs are small, some take real work. Under the hood that's roughly 6 / 16 / 40 engineering hours a month across the three plans. We'll always tell you when a request is bigger than your plan before we start.
Is there a long-term contract?
No. Plans are month-to-month and you can cancel with 30 days' notice. Annual billing is optional and saves 10%. We'd rather keep you because the work is good than because you're locked in.
Why a retainer instead of hiring a dev or using a freelancer?
No hiring, onboarding, or turnover to manage, and no full-time salary for part-time work. You get a fixed monthly line item instead of variable consulting burn or the cost of an idle hire between fires. And the maintenance risk sits with us, not you — when a CVE drops, it's our job to already be on it.
My app is several Rails versions behind. Can you still take it on?
Yes. We'll usually start with a one-time stabilization or upgrade to get you to a supported version, then move you onto a maintenance plan to keep you there. The health assessment tells us — and you — exactly what that looks like and what it costs.
What if I need more work than my plan covers one month?
We'll flag it before doing the work and either bill the overage at a pre-agreed rate or suggest moving up a tier if it's a pattern. You'll never get a surprise invoice.
Do you need production access?
We need enough access to do the job — typically the repository, CI, and error/monitoring tools. We scope it to the minimum required, sign an NDA up front, and follow your security requirements.
What stack do you work with?
Ruby on Rails, any version from 2.x up through current. We're comfortable across the usual surrounding stack: Postgres/MySQL, Sidekiq, Redis, Hotwire, and the common gem ecosystem. We also keep your development environment in good shape — devenv.nix, devcontainers, and Docker / Compose setups so the project stays easy to run and onboard. Production ops and deployment (hosting, uptime, on-call) are a separate engagement; ask us and we'll scope it.
Get started
Tell us about your Rails app
Send a few details and we'll reply with a plan recommendation — usually within one business day. No sales pressure.