DH
DHH
Basecamp • HEY • Ruby on Rails creator
Philosophy
- You don't need the cloud. Own your servers, own your destiny.
- Ruby on Rails is a one-person framework. One developer can build what used to take a team.
- Complexity is the enemy. The majestic monolith beats microservices for 99% of companies.
The Stack
Ruby on Rails
Full-Stack Framework
The framework he created. Convention over configuration. One developer can build an entire SaaS.
Linux
Operating System
Bare metal servers running Linux. Left AWS to save $7M+/year at 37signals.
MySQL
Database
Reliable, boring, fast. No need for the latest NoSQL fad when MySQL handles everything.
Kamal
Deployment
Built by 37signals to deploy Docker containers to any server. Their answer to leaving the cloud.
GitHub
Version Control
Code hosting and CI/CD. The standard for every development team.
HEY
Email
Their own product. Uses Rails for everything including email processing.
Total: ~$50/mo (small-scale equivalent)
Why This Works
DHH built the framework that powers Shopify, GitHub, and Airbnb - and he still uses it for everything. His "leaving the cloud" move saved 37signals millions and proved that renting compute from AWS is often more expensive than owning hardware.
The key insight: most companies don't need Netflix-scale infrastructure. A majestic monolith on bare metal, deployed with Kamal, gives you full control at a fraction of the cost. Rails handles the complexity so you don't have to.