Customers wait for everyday tasks
Search, dashboards or reports take too long to open. Start with the workflows customers actually use and a target response time, rather than optimizing code that is already fast enough.
Services for existing applications
Ruby on Rails performance optimization for your existing application
Slow pages, timeouts and delayed jobs make customers wait and interrupt your team. WideFix investigates the bottleneck, delivers agreed fixes and measures the result. Our Rails performance tuning covers Ruby code, ActiveRecord, PostgreSQL and background processing without starting with a rewrite.
When slow Rails performance becomes a business problem
Jobs delay work and interrupt teammates
Backed-up queues delay imports, notifications or integrations. Investigate the processing path so your team can spend less time retrying jobs and answering questions about missing updates.
Your team needs specialist help
A busy developer, inherited codebase or unclear bottleneck can leave performance work stuck. Bring in a Rails specialist for a bounded investigation, with findings your team can use or ask us to implement.
Where we investigate
Slow requests and database access
Trace slow endpoints, repeated ActiveRecord queries and N+1 loading. Review PostgreSQL execution plans, indexes and caching when the database is involved; separate database time from Ruby work and external calls.
Queues and timeouts
Inspect queue age, throughput, retries and worker contention. Trace long-running jobs and third-party calls that can block processing or exhaust request time limits.
Memory and application work
Profile object allocation, memory growth and expensive Ruby processing. Review payload size and rendering work before deciding whether more infrastructure is justified.
What you receive from the audit
Reproducible baseline
Agree the slow workflows, representative dataset and load conditions. Record request timings, query counts, queue delay or memory use as appropriate, together with the measurement method.
Findings and prioritized fixes
Receive traced bottlenecks with supporting evidence, proposed changes, expected impact, effort and risk. Distinguish quick fixes from changes that need a separate implementation scope.
Implementation and validation
Agree whether the engagement covers diagnosis only or delivery too. For implemented changes, compare the same workload before and after, check correctness and document monitoring and rollback steps.
How improvement is measured
Success criteria belong to your application. The CostaDelHome result is a documented client outcome, not a guaranteed result for every project.
Comparable workloads
Use the same workflow, dataset and environment for before-and-after comparisons. Record cache state and concurrency so a faster result can be explained.
Customer and operational metrics
Track median and tail request latency where traffic allows, error and timeout rates, queue wait time and worker throughput. Confirm that faster processing preserves the expected behavior.
A handover your team can reuse
Document the benchmark, changes and monitoring checks so teammates can investigate future slowdowns without depending on the original developer. Agree whether follow-up belongs with your team or ongoing WideFix maintenance.
Documented client work
Rails performance results from existing client applications
CostaDelHome: 100× faster search
Documented search page loading fell from 10 seconds to 100ms, a 99% reduction. The case study reports an application-level result; it does not identify a PostgreSQL-specific intervention.
Read the case studyKajabi Experts: Ruby processing moved into SQL
Made slow Rails pages usable by moving expensive Ruby-side processing into SQL. The published benchmark measured 79.74× higher processing throughput, not an end-to-end page speed guarantee.
Read the case studyShopWired: queue recovery
Redesigned DelayedJob handling and dispatching to unblock a stalled queue and eliminate recurring daily Heroku H12 errors.
Read the case studyFurther reading
Rails and PostgreSQL performance articles from our engineering work
Engineering article
Why SQL knowledge matters for Rails performance
Explore how SQL knowledge helps identify bottlenecks and improve Rails application performance.
Read the engineering articleEngineering article
Optimizing Rails with ChatGPT, Ruby and SQL
Compare measured Ruby and SQL implementations, and see why generated optimizations still need correctness checks.
Read the engineering articleEngineering article
Select the latest records with PostgreSQL window functions
Build a recent-records query in SQL and integrate it with ActiveRecord instead of grouping the data in Ruby.
Read the engineering articleEngineering article
Benchmarking Rails URL generation
A historical Rails benchmark showing how helper choices affect rendering work. Re-measure on your current Rails version before applying its conclusions.
Read the engineering articleExplore the next step
Related services
Start with a focused performance engagement, or connect the findings to database consulting, application rescue or ongoing maintenance.
Related service
PostgreSQL performance consulting
Investigate slow SQL, execution plans, indexes, locks and connection pressure with a focused database engagement.
Explore the serviceRelated service
Rails rescue and production stabilization
Diagnose recurring failures, stabilize production and document a recovery plan.
Explore the serviceRelated service
Ongoing Rails maintenance
Keep production support, dependency updates and continued feature development in one prioritized backlog.
Explore the serviceDiscuss your Rails performance
Tell us about your application, the current problem and your priorities. We will agree on the scope, access needed and a practical first step.
