Ruby on Rails Startup Heroku Gets $3 Million

Heroku, the online Ruby on Rails (RoR) development and hosting environment, has raised $3 million from Redpoint Ventures and other angel investors.

The Y Combinator startup aims to make software development more accessible for a wider range of people. It does so by providing a browser-based programming environment that cuts out steps traditionally needed to produce RoR applications.

The founders picked RoR because it was designed for developers who want to actualize their ideas quickly. Heroku not only makes the development process easier, but it helps deploy and scale web applications, thereby making the maintenance of online software more feasible as well.

The service remains in private beta but we're told the curtain should lift pretty soon. Meanwhile, developers interested in using Heroku can put their names down on a waitlist.

Co-founder James Lindenbaum says that the platform already supports over 10,000 developers and more than 12,000 applications. Almost all of them are non-critical sites, however, since the service is still working to maintain stability.

Also see Engine Yard, a company with a more hands-on approach to RoR hosting.