ShermansTravel tasked Runtime Revolution with the migration of their website to Ruby on Rails and then to scale that platform to an audience of millions of readers and subscribers.
4 min read
July 22, 2025
Company
ShermansTravel
Industry
Travel
Timeline
Since 2011
Location
New York City
Team
Started with a team of 4 fullstack developers
ShermansTravel has built a loyal audience among travellers who share a passion for the best travel deals on flights, hotels, vacation packages and cruises.
Team Behind the Build
André Bernardo Nunes
Developer
Miguel Horta
QA Tester
Technologies
Challenges
Migrate ShermansTravel’s website from WordPress/PHP to Ruby on Rails.
ShermansTravel sends daily newsletters and eblasts to millions of subscribers, including their weekly Top Deals flagship email—that generates a lot of traffic. ST required a website infrastructure that can handle thousands of simultaneous users across multiple homegrown and third-party applications.
When a user clicks an ad/promotion on Sherman’s website or email, the user goes to an intermediary page that captures that user’s information and the traffic source, and then redirects them to the partner website for the offer. The interstitial must be super fast to provide a seamless experience and limit bounces. We had to continuously improve the performance of this post-click page so that it can capture the required information and redirect in an instant, while handling thousands of simultaneous requests.
Solution
Runtime developed the proprietary platform that manages all the travel deals and all the reporting/analytics for the company.
When a user clicks an ad that ShermansTravel manages, the browser goes to an intermediary page and then to the final deal.This intermediary page is where Shermans registers the click along with all possible information and analytics about the user. This page has to be highly optimized to respond in milliseconds due to traffic volume and user experience. One of our main goals was to have this page load and redirect in less than 2 seconds.
Runtime also helped develop ShermansTravel’s ad retargeting capabilities and recommendation engine (“if you liked this, you’re going to like that”).
Client’s feedback
Runtime has always been more than a development team. It is a strategic business partner that provides technology direction, recommendations, and solutions - managing our product roadmap and influencing our business decisions.
Mark Bloom
President, ShermansTravel
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