10 Costly Ruby on Rails Upgrade Mistakes to Avoid in 2025
Upgrading a Ruby on Rails (RoR) application is a necessary step for staying competitive, maintaining security, and leveraging the latest features and performance improvements.
However, a poorly executed upgrade can result in costly setbacks—often exceeding $100,000. These losses stem from downtime, compromised functionality, data breaches, or inflated development hours.
In this article, we’ll explore 10 critical mistakes companies make during a Ruby on Rails upgrade and offer insights on how to avoid them.
However, upgrading Rails may involve resolving compatibility issues with gems, refactoring deprecated code, and revising business-critical features.
An underestimated scope often results in delayed timelines, unexpected costs, and rushed decisions. If key dependencies like gems or plugins break, developers may need additional time to replace or rewrite functionality.
This oversight prevents teams from identifying environment-specific issues, such as differences in configurations or scaling challenges.
