Application Maintenance & Support: Keeping a Global Trade Show Marketplace Performing at its Best

About the client

Our client is a Texas-based online marketplace that helps businesses buy, sell, rent, and manage pre-owned trade show exhibits and exhibition assets. The platform connects event marketers and exhibitors seeking cost-effective display solutions with sellers looking to repurpose existing exhibit materials.

What makes this platform architecturally distinctive is its three-layer structure: a Ruby on Rails Seller Portal, a Salesforce Operations Platform, and an Angular Customer Marketplace. All of which need to stay in sync and operational at all times. Keeping this ecosystem healthy, secure, and moving forward is precisely where Railsfactory's maintenance and support engagement comes in.

The challenge: A legacy platform that couldn't keep up

When the client approached Railsfactory, they were operating on Rails 5.0.2 and Ruby 2.5.9, both well past their end-of-life dates. Years of accumulated technical debt had left the platform increasingly fragile, with security vulnerabilities, compatibility gaps, and a growing backlog of bugs and inefficiencies.

At the same time, the business needed to keep moving: new features had to be shipped, SEO problems were costing them organic visibility, manual workflows were consuming operational time, and the three-platform architecture required constant attention to keep data flowing correctly.

They needed a trusted technical partner, not for a one-off project, but for ongoing support that could tackle immediate problems while continuously improving the platform over time.

What our app maintenance & support engagement covers

Railsfactory's ongoing engagement with client spans every layer of their platform. Here's what that looks like in practice:

Platform Modernisation

A legacy application cannot be modernised overnight and doing it without disrupting live operations requires careful, phased execution. Our Railsfactory team managed a complex upgrade of the Rails application from version 5.0.2 to Rails 8.0.2, alongside a Ruby upgrade from 2.5.9 to 3.4.4, across multiple major versions. Each step was validated for compatibility, with dependency conflicts resolved as they appeared and deprecated code refactored throughout.

Automated test coverage using RSpec was expanded in parallel, giving the team and client confidence that nothing broke as the platform evolved.

Ongoing Bug Fixes & Platform Stability

Day-to-day maintenance includes monitoring, diagnosing, and resolving bugs across the Rails, Salesforce, and Angular layers. Issues are triaged and addressed within sprint cycles, ensuring the marketplace remains stable and reliable for buyers, sellers, and the operations team alike.

SEO Health Monitoring & Improvement

Search engine visibility is an ongoing concern for any marketplace and not a one-time fix. Railsfactory conducted a thorough SEO audit, identified a significant backlog of on-page issues, and addressed them systematically while preserving existing URL structures to protect current rankings. SEO health continues to be monitored and improved as part of the ongoing engagement.

Cross-Platform Integration Maintenance

A dedicated Salesforce developer maintains and strengthens the bidirectional data sync between the Rails Seller Portal and the Salesforce Operations Platform. REST API integrations between the backend and the Angular Marketplace are also kept current, ensuring data flows correctly across all three platforms at all times.

Automation & New Feature Delivery

Beyond keeping the lights on, Railsfactory actively advances the platform. Recurring manual operational tasks such as report generation, email notifications, and workflow triggers have been automated using rake tasks and Sidekiq background jobs. New marketplace features and business enhancements are delivered in parallel sprint cycles, so the business never has to choose between stability and progress.

The support team

Rails Developer	Salesforce Developer	Project Manager
Handles platform upgrades, bug fixes, new features, automation, and API integrations.	Manages CRM workflows, data sync, and Salesforce-to-Rails integrations.	Coordinates sprint planning, stakeholder communication, and delivery across all workstreams.

Results to date

Since the engagement began few months back, the impact is already visible across every dimension of the platform:

5.0.2 → 8.0.2 Rails Upgraded

2.5.9 → 3.4.4 Ruby Upgraded

62% → 69% SEO Health Score

SEO improvements:

• Duplicate meta descriptions: 22 → 3
• Duplicate title tags: 21 → 3
• Missing H1 tags: 35 → 7
• Broken external links: 9 → 1
• HTTPS-to-HTTP page issues: 141 → 22

Operational & platform gains:

• Automated report generation and email notifications, eliminating recurring manual effort.
• Strengthened data integrity across Rails, Salesforce, and Angular platforms.
• Increased test coverage via RSpec, reducing regression risk for future changes.
• Continuous new feature delivery alongside maintenance, no trade-off between stability and growth.
• Established a modern, future-ready codebase for long-term scalability.

Our client consistently appreciated the quality of deliverables and timely execution of requirements. Positive feedback was received across framework upgrades, automation initiatives, and new feature implementations. The engagement has grown into a trusted, long-term working relationship built on reliability and continuous improvement.

Why ongoing support makes the difference

A marketplace platform is never really "done". It needs to be kept secure, current, and performant, while continuously moving forward as the business grows. What began as a modernization challenge became an opportunity to future-proof an entire multi-platform marketplace. By executing a complex Rails 5 to Rails 8 upgrade without disrupting live operations, systematically clearing years of SEO debt, automating manual workflows, and reinforcing cross-system integrations, Railsfactory helped this marketplace emerge as a more secure, more visible, and far more maintainable platform.

With an ongoing partnership in place, our client now has a stable, scalable foundation to continue building new marketplace features, improving organic search performance, and expanding automation across their operations.

If you're looking for a reliable, well-structured application maintenance and support partner, contact our team at Railsfactory. We're always ready to help!