What Rails 8 Means For Your Hosting

A driving theme behind Rails 8 is that it’s the “anti-PaaS” release. PaaS stands for Platform as a Service, like Heroku, which charge a premium so you don’t have to manage your own infrastructure. Historically, these platforms have been incredibly valuable, but technology has evolved significantly over the past 20 years, and we’re now much less dependent on them.

Rails 8 changes the game with two major innovations: simplified requirements and simplified deployments.

Traditionally, a production app needed a web server, primary database, and additional databases or caches for optimized performance. With Rails 8’s new “Solid” technologies—Solid Queue, Solid Cache, and Solid Cable—you can rely on a single primary database to handle these needs efficiently.

On top of that, Rails 8 streamlines deployments with native support for Docker and the introduction of Kamal 2.

Supporting Docker means you can package your application as an image and run it reliably on any compatible environment. Kamal lets you set up a secure hosting environment on any major cloud provider or your own hardware, ready to receive Docker images.

Together, these changes can bring substantial cost savings or performance boosts—sometimes as much as 100x. This makes Rails 8 worth considering as you plan for your infrastructure.