Bookshop.org, an innovative online book retailer connecting readers with independent booksellers globally, faced limitations from their legacy Ruby on Rails monolith. As the platform continued to grow, they sought a solution to enable efficient scaling and gradual migration to a more flexible microservices architecture.

The Challenge

• Transitioning from a monolithic architecture to a modern and scalable microservices setup
• Reducing DevOps workload and achieving cloud cost efficiencies
• Ensuring a seamless migration process without disrupting customer experiences

Picking Encore and GCP as a solution

Bookshop.org turned to Encore deployed to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) as the key to unlocking the benefits of microservices and modernizing their platform. With Encore, they have been able to:

• Incrementally migrate from their Ruby on Rails monolith to a Go-based microservices architecture using Encore, while still relying partially on the Rails stack
• Streamline infrastructure management using Encore’s declarative Backend Framework, ensuring control of cloud costs and minimizing DevOps workload
• Resolve bottlenecks by removing the need for systems experience to perform key tasks, leading to faster iterations
• Simplify management of development and staging environments, allowing for more confidence and quality when building microservices

The Results

By adopting Encore, Bookshop.org have experienced significant improvements:

• DevOps workload reduced by 90%
• Delivery speed improved by 2-3x
• Cloud cost reduced to $0 for preview apps, when using Encore Cloud

“DevOps workload has dropped by 90% for services migrated to Encore. Where before we might have spent a whole day or more dealing with Terraform, Kubernetes, GCP secrets, ingress, and load balancers, with Encore we’re now done in less than an hour.”

Mason Stewart — CTO at Bookshop.org

"With less DevOps energy required to make changes – frankly none a lot of the time – we’ve become more confident in testing, evaluating and revising our approach to microservices."

John Bannister — Senior Developer at Bookshop.org

Conclusion

Bookshop.org's ongoing journey from a monolithic Ruby on Rails application to a modern Go microservices architecture using Encore highlights the transformative power of the right development platform.

By using Encore, Bookshop.org has been able to control their cloud bill, drastically reduce DevOps workload, and achieve a drastically improved delivery speed.

This has allowed them to confidently and quickly iterate and develop their new microservices architecture.

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