Custom Rails Platforms
Multi-tenant SaaS and web products, built by the person who'll still be running them next year.
Custom Rails Platforms is our flagship build service: production multi-tenant SaaS, internal tools, and web products engineered on Rails 8 — subscriptions, multiple customer accounts, payments, and integrations. It's for founders and operators who need software built to run for years, not a prototype that falls over at the first paying customer. The same engineer who ships your platform can stay on to run it — because that's exactly how we build and operate our own.
What problem does this solve?
You don't need a brochure site or a throwaway prototype. You need a real platform — one that handles many customer accounts, takes payments, talks to the tools your business already runs on, and doesn't buckle the day a real user logs in. Most shops bill hours against a spec, hand you a codebase, and vanish. Six months later the "MVP" can't take a second tenant without a rewrite, nobody understands the auth flow, and every deploy is a held breath. You want a platform built to last — and someone who'll still be around when it needs to grow.
How we approach it
1. Understand the business first — what the platform has to earn, not just what screens it needs. 2. Architect for multi-tenancy from day one, so a second and hundredth customer cost the same. 3. Build in small, reviewable increments — every change ships on its own and is easy to reason about. 4. Wire payments and integrations against real provider sandboxes, not mocked happy paths. 5. Deploy to production on modern Rails 8 infrastructure you own. 6. Hand over clean — or stay on to operate it. Boring, well-tested tech over trendy rewrites, the whole way through.
What you get
- Full application architecture and a multi-tenant data model built to scale - Authentication done right: passwordless sign-in, passkeys, and 2FA - Stripe billing for your SaaS, plus Stripe Connect so your tenants can invoice and get paid by their own customers - Third-party integrations — accounting (Wave, QuickBooks), SMS/email, shipping, mapping, and more - Admin tooling to actually run the business behind the product - Real-time, no-reload UI with Hotwire (Turbo + Stimulus) - Background jobs, caching, and websockets on the Solid stack (Solid Queue / Cache / Cable) — no rented Redis or Sidekiq sprawl - Production deployment via Kamal, self-hosted on infrastructure you own - A real test suite and CI, so the next change is safe to ship
How long does it take?
Starts with Discovery & Scoping, then a fixed-scope custom build. The exact timeline is set during Discovery — no open-ended hourly meter.
The platform you actually needed
Most agencies build your software and walk. We build and run our own.
Octane Labs operates a portfolio of production SaaS — the same stack, the same founder, the same on-call pager. When we build your platform, we're not billing hours against a spec and handing off. We're applying the exact patterns we bet our own business on, and we can stay to run it. That's production skin in the game, and it changes how the software gets built: for the long run, not for the invoice.
Proof we can point at, not adjectives
ContractorLink — a multi-tenant website + CRM SaaS built and operated by Octane. Roughly 90 models. Automated custom-domain onboarding (Cloudflare custom hostnames with Caddy on-demand TLS), so tenants bring their own domain and it just works. A two-layer Stripe integration: our SaaS subscription billing and Stripe Connect so tenants invoice their own clients. An Anthropic-powered SEO/content engine with per-generation cost accounting. We built it. We run it.
BeanLink — a multi-tenant wholesale SaaS for coffee roasters: quote → order → invoice → fulfillment, a branded buyer portal per roaster, and bidirectional accounting sync with both Wave and QuickBooks — a genuinely hard integration most shops won't touch.
TrackWright — a single canonical TypeScript geometry engine (39 modules, 78 test files) driving a 2D SVG editor, a Three.js 3D WebGL view, and an automatic parts list, all from one data model, shipped as an offline-capable PWA.
These aren't case studies we borrowed. They're software we own, operate, and get paged for.
How the engagement runs
We start with Discovery & Scoping — a paid, focused pass that turns your idea into a real plan and a scoped build, so nobody signs a blank check. From there it's a fixed-scope build, shipped in small reviewable increments you can watch land week over week. Payments and integrations get wired against real provider sandboxes, not mocked. You launch on infrastructure you own. And when it's live, you decide whether we hand off or stay on to operate it.
Pricing is set against the scope we agree on in Discovery — not an open-ended hourly meter.
Frequently asked questions
- What kinds of products do you build under this service?
- Multi-tenant SaaS, internal operations platforms, and customer-facing web products — anything with real accounts, subscriptions, payments, and integrations behind it. If it needs to run in production and be maintained for years, it's a fit. If you need a marketing site or a quick prototype, that's a different (smaller) conversation.
- Can you handle multi-tenancy and Stripe Connect? That's where our last build fell apart.
- Yes — both are running in our own products today. ContractorLink is a multi-tenant CRM and website SaaS with two layers of Stripe: our own subscription billing, plus Connect so each tenant can invoice their own clients. We've solved the tenant-isolation and payments problems on software we own, not just for clients.
- Will I be locked into your hosting or a stack I can't leave?
- No. We deploy with Kamal onto infrastructure you own — a plain Rails 8 app you (or any Rails engineer) can pick up. No proprietary platform, no rented infrastructure you can't walk away from. The codebase is yours.
- What happens after launch?
- Your call. We can hand off cleanly with documentation and a tested suite, or you can move onto OctaneCare and keep the person who built it on the pager. Most platforms benefit from continuity — the engineer who scoped and wrote your code is the one who understands it best.
Related work
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Wildcat Off Road Park: A Custom Booking-and-Payments Platform for a Multi-Accommodation Off-Road Park
A custom Ruby on Rails reservation-and-payments platform for a Kentucky off-road park that rents cabins, RV sites, and campsites. One booking engine handles both customer self-service and staff-created reservations — date-lock availability that prevents double-booking, Stripe deposits and balances, group bookings for multi-trailer trips, damage charges on a card on file, policy-driven refunds, and an operations reporting hub — live at wildcatoffroadpark.com.
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TrackWright
A planner for Carrera Digital slot-car layouts — design in 2D and 3D from one shared geometry engine and get the exact Carrera parts list to build it, including what you still need to buy.
Ready to talk about Custom Rails Platforms?
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