The Hidden Costs of a Failing Application (and How to Avoid Them)

Andy Henson

Modern businesses rely on their digital products more than ever. Your application, whether it’s a customer portal, SaaS product, internal tool, or e-commerce engine, is no longer just supporting your business. It is your business. So, what happens when that application starts to fail?

While a full system outage grabs everyone’s attention, most app failures happen incrementally. Responsiveness might slow, glitches might happen, or security vulnerabilities creep in. And this is where the financial bite begins to be felt. It’s not in the dramatic events, but rather the slow loss of customer trust and in-house productivity. And if you’re running a Ruby on Rails web application, these things can be made even worse if the codebase hasn’t been properly maintained. Rails is powerful and flexible, but like any framework, it needs consistent care.

So, what can you do to safeguard both your software and your bottom line?

Key Takeaways

Small performance issues often translate into major financial losses.
User frustration results in higher churn, lower conversion rates, and reputational harm.
Technical debt increases costs, slows down development, and creates security vulnerabilities.
Lack of proactive maintenance disproportionately impacts Ruby on Rails applications with ageing codebases.
A structured rescue plan from experts like Foxsoft can stabilise, modernise, and future-proof your application.

The True Price of Poor App Performance and How You Can Save Your App

How problems begin

Applications rarely “fail” overnight. Instead, decline happens in stages, each one deceptively easy to ignore.

Minor bugs

A form that sometimes doesn’t validate correctly. A dashboard that loads in four seconds instead of one. A background job that fails once every few days. Individually, these issues seem trivial, but when you multiply them by hundreds of users interacting daily, the cost becomes clear:

Lost transactions
Abandoned checkouts
Incorrect or missing data
Reduced employee productivity
Increased customer support workload

This drip-drip of inefficiency can quietly drain thousands of pounds monthly without being noticed.

Slow performance

Internet users are no longer patient. We all expect everything instantly, so a one-second loading delay can reduce web conversions by 7%. And 53% of users abandon a site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. If your Ruby on Rails web application hasn’t been optimised or is running on outdated gems, old Rails versions, or a weak infrastructure setup, performance bottlenecks are inevitable. And so is customer loss.

Technical problems always get worse

Every shortcut, patched bug, and new feature layered on top of old code contributes to technical slowdown. If left unchecked, it can cause a whole range of unexpected issues and expenses, ultimately leading to a foundation of brittle code that’s hard to extend, so even simple updates end up feeling like major engineering projects.

The financial impact of a poorly performing application

Many companies underestimate just how expensive software issues can be, but the drain comes from a variety of areas.

Lost revenue

For consumer-facing applications, performance and reliability directly affect sales. Failed payments, slow load times, and buggy user flows all reduce your ability to convert customers. Even B2B platforms aren’t immune. Downtime or inconsistent performance undermines client confidence and may lead to contract cancellations or reduced usage.

Increased support costs

If your app is causing problems, your customers will tell you, through support tickets, emails, and phone calls, leaving your support teams overstretched. When that happens, your response times increase, customer satisfaction drops, and the cycle worsens. It’s so much easier to fix the root problem than to let it escalate.

Reputational damage

Trust is difficult to build and easy to lose. An unreliable application signals that a company is unprofessional, understaffed, or indifferent to its users. This results in no end of fallout, from bad reviews and negative social media experiences to word-of-mouth complaints and an unwillingness to recommend your services. And once trust is lost, customer acquisition costs rise sharply.

Slower innovation

When you have technical issues baked into your foundations, it becomes incredibly difficult to innovate. Instead of delivering new features, your development team is stuck firefighting bugs, incompatibilities, outdated dependencies, and performance problems. This slows your time to market and helps competitors overtake you.

Security vulnerabilities

As libraries, gems, and Rails versions age, security patches stop being available. Vulnerabilities accumulate, often without detection.

Risks include:

Data breaches
Compliance failures
GDPR penalties
Costly forensic analysis
Legal liability
Lasting brand damage

For any business handling personal or financial data, this is a serious threat. And it’s entirely avoidable.

Why Ruby on Rails applications need proactive care

People like Ruby on Rails for its clarity, convention-over-configuration philosophy, and rapid development capability. But because Rails evolves quickly, so regular maintenance is crucial.

Without structured Ruby on Rails maintenance, you may encounter:

Outdated gems no longer receiving updates
Deprecated Rails features causing breakages
Incompatible library updates
Slowing performance due to old patterns or inefficient queries
Growing difficulty finding developers who can understand legacy code
The longer your application goes without care, the more expensive and complex it becomes to fix.

How professional support can help avoid these issues

Many organisations reach a point where maintaining or rescuing an ageing application is simply beyond their internal capacity. In-house teams are often too busy building new features, or they may not have experience with legacy Rails codebases. This is where a specialised partner becomes invaluable.

Companies like Foxsoft offer a “Rails Rescue Service” that can help businesses with system stabilisation, modernisation, and long-term sustainability. And this can look like a couple of different things.

Diagnostic assessment

They begin by thoroughly analysing your application:

Code quality
Database performance
Architecture
Dependency health
Security posture
Hosting and infrastructure

This gives you an honest, clear picture of your system’s current state.

Immediate stabilisation

If there are urgent problems with your system – crashes, slowdowns, or security risks – they will always be the priority. Businesses often see immediate improvements in performance and stability within days.

Repair and refactor

A dedicated Rails rescue team will untangle problematic code, remove technical debt, update Rails versions, and restore architectural integrity. This is particularly valuable for older Ruby on Rails web applications that have been patched repeatedly over the years.

Future-proof maintenance

Once the application is stable, ongoing monthly maintenance ensures it stays that way:

Routine updates
Server and infrastructure checks
Security monitoring
Performance optimisation
Proactive improvements

This prevents the system from slipping back into decline.

The cost of rescue vs. the cost of doing nothing

Many companies hesitate to invest in a rescue. But if you leave things to flounder, the costs can be so much higher, with lost revenue from customer drop-off and higher customer acquisition costs. You also have increased support expenses, potentially expensive security incidents, frustrated internal teams, and stalled product innovation.

A rescue is almost always far cheaper.

A failing application doesn’t just cause technical problems; it creates strategic, financial, and reputational damage. As your business grows, the cost of ignoring these issues rises exponentially. So, if you rely on a Ruby on Rails web application and you’ve noticed performance issues, declining stability, or creeping technical debt, you need to take action. Because your software should be supporting your business, not holding it back.

Do you need support to stabilise, modernise, and future-proof your Ruby on Rails application? Foxsoft is ready to help. Get in touch.