Back in 2007, Higher Pixels was a Rails-powered product company with two core offerings: Tick for time tracking, and M Sites for helping small nonprofits create websites. 

Around this time, many of M Site’s customers were local churches across the U.S. When church leaders started asking Tom Rossi and his co-founder how they could publish their sermons online, it sparked an idea that would evolve into something much bigger than they could have imagined.

The solution became Buzzsprout, which is now one of the world’s leading podcast hosting platforms. 

Launched in 2008, Buzzsprout has helped over 400,000 podcasters get their shows online. It is particularly loved by podcasters in the Ruby and Rails ecosystem and used by many, including Remote Ruby, the RubyGems Podcast, and more. 

[Watch our YouTube interview with Tom Rossi here]

The Journey to Rails & Buzzsprout

Higher Pixels began as a client services company in the mid-90s. In 2001, Tom Rossi and his co-founder Kevin Finn decided to make a pivotal shift. Instead of continuing to build software for other people, they decided to create their own products.

The first of those products was Tick, a time-tracking tool inspired by their own frustrations with client work. “It was all about tracking time to hit your budgets,” Tom explained to us in an interview. “At the end of a project, you’d realize you blew your budget a week ago and nobody knew. Tick helped solve that.” The product quickly found a loyal user base and remains in use today, despite the team shifting its focus to newer products.

In 2005, Tom discovered Ruby on Rails through the now-famous “build a blog” demo showcasing Rails.

“We were a Microsoft shop before that,” Tom explained. “But Rails provided focus, not just in how you build software, but how you build a product. We started building with Rails and haven’t looked back.”

During this period, Tom rebuilt M Sites on Rails. And when church leaders started asking how to share sermons online, the Higher Pixels team saw an opportunity. “We built a very simple application to be able to build a podcast,” Tom said. “We had no idea how big podcasting would be.”

Buzzsprout Today

Today, Buzzsprout is a podcast hosting service trusted by over 120,000 active podcasters. It has scaled through the iPhone boom, the ‘Serial’ wave, and the pandemic podcast explosion, thanks in part to Ruby on Rails. 

Buzzsprout’s growth has been matched by its features, which include:

  • Podcast hosting & distribution: Easily publish episodes to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and every major directory.
  • Magic Mastering: AI-powered audio cleanup for studio-quality sound.
  • CoHost AI: Automatically generate transcripts, show notes, and chapters.
  • Advanced analytics: IAB-certified stats on downloads, devices, and listener locations.

But as Tom says, what differentiates Buzzsprout isn’t just its tools. Their team is known for its first-class support for the podcasting community. 

“Podcasters are often introverted,” Tom shared. “They don’t always get a lot of affirmation. Our support team isn’t just answering technical questions, they’re encouraging people and helping them push through challenges.”

Building with “Vanilla” Ruby on Rails

Higher Pixels has always made a deliberate choice to keep the tech behind their products “as vanilla as can be.” Rather than chasing the latest frameworks or experimenting with untested tools, they’ve leaned into Rails’ conventions and have trusted the opinions of the broader community.

This philosophy has allowed Buzzsprout to scale cleanly and move fast. “Rails is why we can ship features competitors can’t,” Tom said. “For example, we built fully native iOS and Android apps in under a year. The only reason we could do that was because we kept our Rails codebase simple and maintainable.”

Equally important has been the way Higher Pixels approaches collaboration. As a product company first, they prioritize delivering value to users rather than chasing technical novelty. That means cultivating what Tom calls a “healthy tension” between designers and developers.

“If one side dominates, the product pays the price,” he explained. “If designers dominate, you end up with something overly complicated. If programmers dominate, you end up with something efficient but not usable. That tension has always been important to us.”

Giving Back to the Ruby on Rails Ecosystem

Buzzsprout has long been a supporter of the Ruby on Rails ecosystem, which is one reason why many Ruby podcasters (like Marty Haught and David Hill, co-hosts of the RubyGems Podcast) have trusted the platform. 

The company has also been a sponsor of Rails World since its inception. This year, they are even funding Ruby podcasters to attend the conference in Amsterdam and setting up an on-site recording studio so Rails creators can interview others and share stories with the community.

Looking ahead, Tom hopes Buzzsprout can contribute technical expertise back to Rails through open sourece. One area where the team’s experience could be especially valuable is serving public assets at scale.

Buzzsprout currently handles hundreds of thousands of RSS feeds and millions of MP3 requests, all of which must be delivered quickly and reliably to podcast directories and apps worldwide. Unlike private file storage, which Rails’ Active Storage handles elegantly, Buzzsprout’s use case requires high-volume, public-facing delivery of large assets. Optimizing this flow means reducing API calls, managing CDN performance, and ensuring files remain instantly accessible even under sudden traffic spikes.

“37signals has done an excellent job around private file storage,” Tom says. “But for us, it’s the opposite. We don’t want it secure. We want it open to the public, and we want to limit the number of API calls being made to serve those assets. That’s where we think Buzzsprout might be able to uniquely help Rails.”

As Tom says, “We’ve benefited so much from Rails. Now we’re trying to figure out how we can bring that back into the ecosystem.”

Why Choose Ruby on Rails Today

For Tom, there’s no question about whether new startups should choose Ruby on Rails for their tech stack. “It’s just an incredible framework to move fast and build product. I still think it’s the best thing out there for building web software.”

That speed to market has always been a hallmark of Rails. But beyond speed, it provides a foundation that makes long-term growth possible. By following conventions and keeping their code “as vanilla as possible,” Higher Pixels has avoided the technical debt traps that slow down many young companies. 

For Tom, that’s the real power of Rails: a framework that supports both rapid iteration in the early days and sustainable growth over time. “It’s not just about moving fast,” he says. “It’s about building something that can last.”

Watch our interview with Tom Rossi on Ruby Central's YouTube channel: