When your Rails app goes down, time slows to a crawl. Customers may be locked out, support tickets pile up, and every minute feels like revenue slipping through your hands. If you’re a non-technical founder, the panic doubles — you know something’s wrong but you don’t know how to fix it.
The good news: you don’t need to be an engineer to take smart, immediate steps. Here’s how to respond to a production emergency on your Rails app.
1. Breathe and Confirm the Issue
First, verify what’s really happening. Is it one customer reporting an error, or is the entire app unreachable? Check your app yourself, and look at any monitoring tools you may have in place (Heroku status page, AWS dashboard, Pingdom, etc.). If you don’t have monitoring, this is the time to start thinking about it — but for now, focus on confirming the outage.
2. Communicate Quickly
Silence makes customers assume the worst. Post a quick status update via email, in-app banner, or social channel. Keep it simple:
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Acknowledge the issue
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Assure users you’re working on it
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Promise updates as you have them
Transparency buys you time and keeps trust intact.
3. Contain the Damage
If the problem is tied to payments, logins, or sensitive workflows, consider temporarily disabling those features until a fix is in place. This prevents a bad situation from getting worse, like duplicate charges or corrupted data.
4. Call in Reinforcements
This is where most founders freeze: who do you call if you don’t have a Rails developer on staff? You have options:
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Hosting providers: Heroku, Render, or AWS often have support you can escalate to, however their main goal is to confirm that their service is not the problem. You may get some suggestions, but they are unable to dig into your application code or change infrastructure config to provide a solution.
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Rails consultancies: Specialized firms (like Rails Fever) that handle production firefighting and ongoing maintenance can fix your emergency and put preventive measures in place to make sure it never happens again.
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Freelancers: Platforms like Upwork or Fiverr can connect you, though vetting in the middle of an emergency is risky. It could be hard to get high quality work this way — you may get a quick & dirty patch until the problem resurfaces.
The safest move is to build a relationship with a Rails support partner before disaster strikes, but in a true emergency, start calling in experienced Rails consultants right away.
5. Document Everything
While the engineers work, keep notes:
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When the outage started
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What errors customers saw
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Any recent changes (deploys, new features, config updates)
This context can speed up diagnosis and recovery.
6. Plan for Next Time
Once the fire is out, don’t just breathe a sigh of relief and move on. Emergencies are wake-up calls. Ask:
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Do you have monitoring and alerts set up?
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Do you have automated backups and tested restores?
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Do you have a Rails support plan or fractional CTO to call when things break?
Emergencies don’t have to become disasters if you build the right safety net.
Finding the Right Help for Your Rails App
If you’re a founder without in-house Rails expertise, the best step you can take after the immediate emergency is finding a long-term partner. A good Rails consultancy won’t just put out fires — they’ll keep your app updated, secure, and stable so you can focus on growing your business instead of firefighting.
Need help with Rails maintenance? We offer comprehensive Rails Care Plans for ongoing support, technical audits to assess your current state, and Rails upgrades to keep you current. View our pricing plans to find the right fit for your needs.
Schedule a consultation or email hello@railsfever.com to discuss your Rails needs.