To start with
Why Ruby on Rails (RoR)? Examples are the best way to show the effectiveness and popularity of this framework. And there are many of them. Certainly you have not heard or even used e-commerce platforms before, and you couldn’t know that they were created with the help of RoR. We chose a few of the most interesting ones:
- Shopify - is one of the best-known and best-growing e-commerce platforms in the world. It helps B2B clients to develop their own businesses. Such functions as order tracking or a payment system using credit cards were created with the help of Ruby on Rails among the other things.
- AirBnB - a platform that allows you to book apartments, houses and attractive places. This service is gaining more and more recognition in the eyes of customers.
- Spree commerce - this is an open - source e-commerce solution based on Ruby on Rails. RoR provides a background to building and developing online stores.
- Prestashop - is an open software for online stores. It helps in sales and online activities.

When we look deeper into the characteristics of these platforms, we notice that they all have the most important and most popular functionalities related to e-commerce. And this is the first evidence that Ruby on Rails works great in this industry. And now it's time for more.
Short way to MVP and time saving
Many companies that develop e-commerce platforms take decision to implement the MVP product (Minimum Value Product). Does this solution support product development in terms of customer preferences and behavior? How does it work in practice? In case of Ruby on Rails, the first functionalities of the platform can be obtained in a very short time. In this aspect, RoR seems unrivaled with other languages and frameworks. Due to quick creation of these functionalities, you can start testing the product and gathering feedback from the customers. In this way, you become able not only to gain valuable knowledge, but above all, minimize the risk of any future failures.
Reliability
Ruby on Rails is characterized by its high quality. Developers creating a product can run a lot of tests that affect its reliability. And this is a very important feature in case of e-commerce platforms. While caring about the highest customer satisfaction, a reliable and functional product should be made as mostly available for a client. It is estimated that customers of e-commerce platforms, even more than 75%, often return to the same developers, if their previous contact did not cause any problems and their experience was positive.
Security
Ruby on Rails provides mechanisms that improve application security. Built-in protection against XSS, CSRF and SQL Injection attacks, which qualify for the most popular attacks on network, are used for this purpose. Increased security in the case of e-commerce platforms is particularly important in purchasing processes.
Flexibility
Ruby on Rails gives a lot of freedom to developers in any changes or modifications to the code. This means that RoR provides possibility of flexible response to market feedback and efficient implementation of changes in operation of e-commerce platforms. As well no problems occur in case of its possible extension with new options. Dedicated plugins are helpful in this.

If you are building an e-commerce platform and you think that its software should be secure, fast, reliable and flexible, then, reading this article, you could find many arguments for Ruby on Rails being a good choice. Of course, RoR does not have a monopoly on building such platforms. There is no doubt, however, that choosing this framework leads to both effectiveness and success. The world's largest brands, which successfully run their own e-commerce platforms, have already found out about it.