Big Name Companies Using Ruby on Rails

Woke up this morning to the following email request from the CTO of one of Hashrocket's big, important clients:

Can you give me a list of big name firms that you know are using Ruby on Rails for major projects. Need it by this afternoon for an important meeting with top management.

I scrambled together a response, including some advice from folks that responded to my query on Twitter (thx!) After some reflection, I realized that it would make a good informative blog post.

First of all, lots of people pointed me to http://www.workingwithrails.com/high-profile-organisations, which lists the following firms:

Sing ♫ one of these firms is not like the other ♫ while you're reading :)

• amazon.com
• BBC
• CapGemini
• BPN
• Cisco
• C|Net
• EA (Electronic Arts)
• IBM
• JP Morgan
• NASA
• Oakley
• Oracle
• Siemens
• ♫ ThoughtWorks ♫
• Yahoo!

In addition to the list above, there's a number of companies where I have direct, or reliably indirect knowledge of Rails adoption through my friends and associates:

• John Deere
• New York Times
• NBC
• Barclays
• LA Times
• Chicago Tribune
• Orbitz
• Google
• Turner Media
• Limewire

For good measure, I also mentioned http://rails100.pbwiki.com/, which tracks high-traffic consumer-facing websites that corporate-types won't necessarily recognize by name, but that for sure handle millions and millions of visits per day. The top ten list on that page (and corresponding Alexa rankings):

• twitter.com [642 !!?! I thought it would be higher]


• scribd.com [940]


• blingee.com [1170]


• yellowpages.com [1734]


• penny-arcade.com [2069]


• 43things.com [4190]


• kongregate.com [4488]


• pitchforkmedia.com [4740]


• projectpath.com [5041 One of the Basecamp hostnames]


• funnyordie.com [5089]

What big-name companies do you know about where Ruby on Rails is gaining traction and adoption from the grassroots level on up?

Comments

[wonko]

Don't forget geni.com

[Chris Bailey]

How about Chase Manhattan bank? I believe the Ruby on Rails Podcast had an interview with them a while back. That's a good name to throw at people who care about these kinds of things. And, while I wouldn't say they've "adopted" it, I used to work at Adobe, and there are projects being done in Rails there.

[Russell]

Ministry of Social Development, New Zealand's largest government department.

[Matt Henderson]

Hello, our most recently developed Rails site (launched last October) has (at present) almost 700,000 users.

http://catalogchoice.org

[Martin Sadler]

Hey Obie, that WWR list could certainly do with a refresh.

I also noted a while back that LinkedIn were recruiting for a couple of Rails developers but I'm not sure as to what capacity ROR is used in-house.

Also if you've got time on your hands it's worth scanning the company list alphabetically on WWR:
http://workingwithrails.com/browse/companies/name

Theres bound to be a few more new ones now.

Just found Walt Disney for instance:
http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/8832-irfan-baig

But it's always worth mailing to double check as many developers do Ruby/Rails outside of their day job and just because they are listed on WWR doesn't always mean the company is using it.

[Robert Brook]

Us, for the UK Parliament: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/

[Brent Sordyl]

I'm using Rails at Score! Educational Centers which is a division of Kaplan.

[Chris Moore]

Add the State of South Carolina to the list!

[Tamer Salama]

Revolution Health - http://www.revolutionhealth.com/

[Florian]

You are right the twitter statistics should be higher, but most people don't use the website but instead use one of the API applications.