Phoenix

Phoenix is the web framework that makes real-time features trivially easy. Built on Elixir and the Erlang VM (the system that runs phone networks), it handles millions of concurrent connections with LiveView — server-rendered interactive UIs without writing JavaScript.

If you're building a real-time app — chat, dashboards, collaborative tools, live updates — Phoenix's concurrency model is hard to beat. Rails is the convention-over-configuration inspiration but can't match Phoenix's concurrent connection handling. Django is Python's equivalent but async is bolted on. Next.js handles real-time through WebSockets but you're managing the connection layer yourself. Commercially, services like Pusher and Ably sell what Phoenix gives you for free.

LiveView is the game-changer. Server-side rendering with real-time updates over WebSockets. No React, no API layer, no client-side state management. The productivity boost is enormous for the right use cases.

The catch: you have to learn Elixir. It's a great language — functional, pattern matching, immutable data — but the talent pool is small. Hiring is hard. The ecosystem is smaller than Ruby or Python's. And LiveView, while magical, adds server load per connected user. If you're building a high-traffic content site that doesn't need real-time features, Phoenix's strengths are wasted.