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makandra

makandra is a Rails consultancy based in Germany. Since 2009, it has delivered over 200 custom web applications across the full software lifecycle — from requirements and UI/UX to development, operations, and maintenance. Clients range from small businesses to global enterprises. Notable projects include Siemens SiESTA (cybersecurity testing), JustClaims (air passenger claims), Audi MediaCenter (press hub), GREENZERO (LCA platform), JUUUPORT (online youth counseling), and Studyflix (video learning platform).

makandra often maintains applications long-term — some since 2010 are still in active use. From this commitment emerged Rails LTS, a service providing security patches for legacy Rails versions, compatible with modern Ruby. On the infrastructure side, a dedicated DevOps team hosts and manages Rails apps on makandra-owned hardware in a German data center.

How They Use Rails

Around 95% of customer applications developed by makandra are built using Ruby on Rails.

Most makandra applications follow a monolithic architecture with heavy namespacing, using mostly RSpec and capybara-lockstep for testing and PostgreSQL as the default database. Frontend development prioritizes progressive enhancement with Unpoly, though React and Angular are used when needed. Deployments rely on Linux VMs with Capistrano, leveraging OpsComplete, their in-house hosting platform, provides Rails-specific automation for provisioning and deployment.

In addition, makandra maintains a significant number of internal Rails applications that support daily operations — including tools for CVE tracking, project management, billing, hot desking, lunch booking, secret sharing, knowledge management, private LLM chat, and more.

In 2024, Company became a contributing member of the Rails Foundation.

Joining the Rails Foundation was a huge milestone for us and shows that we are fully behind Ruby on Rails. We are proud to be part of this community and we are determined to do our part to further develop and strengthen the framework.
Thomas Eisenbarth makandra CEO and Founder

Open Source Contributions

active_type
https://github.com/makandra/active_type
unpoly
https://unpoly.com/
unpoly-rails
https://github.com/unpoly/unpoly-rails
capybara-lockstep
https://github.com/makandra/capybara-lockstep
consul
https://github.com/makandra/consul

Community Involvement

Conferences:

Ruby on Ice 2018 co-organizer & sponsor
Ruby on Ice 2019 co-organizer & sponsor
Ruby Unconf sponsor 2023
Rails World sponsor 2025

Frequent talks at Ruby meetups and conferences, e.g.:
We’re breaking up with JavaScript frontends (talk at RubyShift Munich, Ruby User Group Berlin)
Why I’m closing your GitHub issue (talk at RailsConf)
Fixing Flaky E2E Tests in Ruby (talk at Full Stack Hour)
Solving bizarre authorization requirements with Rails (talk at RubyShift Munich)

Teaching:
Growing Rails Applications in Practice: Book about scaling monolithic Rails applications. Published by the Pragmatic Bookshelf.
We open-sourced our knowledge base with > 4000 guides for Ruby, Rails and web development.

Recruiting
Recruiting Ruby developers has historically been a challenge, especially in a smaller city like Augsburg. makandra addressed this by creating a trainee program where university graduates learn Ruby on Rails and related technologies over a nine-month period before joining client projects. Combined with a strong culture of mentorship and continuous learning, this program has helped build a large team of experienced engineers over the years.