Top Companies Using Elixir in Production (and Why You Should Too)

BetaMizeBetaMize
5 min read

Elixir is increasingly becoming a go-to choice for companies that need scalable, concurrent, and fault-tolerant systems. Built on the rock-solid Erlang VM (BEAM), Elixir brings together productivity and performance, making it ideal for modern web and real-time applications.

Here are 10 leading companies using Elixir in production, what they use it for, and why it works so well for them.


1. Discord

Use Case: Real-time voice, video, and chat for gamers and communities
Why Elixir?
Discord is one of the most well-known Elixir success stories. With over 150 million monthly users, it needed a tech stack capable of handling millions of concurrent websocket connections without compromising speed or stability. They chose Elixir due to its lightweight concurrency model powered by the Erlang VM, which allows for efficient memory usage and high throughput.

Elixir helped Discord reduce the number of servers required to manage live voice sessions, saving on infrastructure while improving performance. Their Elixir-based services now handle billions of messages every day.


2. Pinterest

Use Case: Content discovery and sharing platform
Why Elixir?
Pinterest deals with massive user traffic and countless background tasks. Their engineering team integrated Elixir for specific backend services, especially where concurrency and fault-tolerance were key. Tasks like push notifications, background jobs, and real-time analytics benefited from Elixir’s ability to manage thousands of operations concurrently.

The adoption helped them streamline background processing pipelines and reduce the operational overhead caused by managing those pipelines in less concurrent languages.


3. Moz

Use Case: SEO tools and analytics platform
Why Elixir?
Moz needed a solution for processing vast amounts of SEO data efficiently. They turned to Elixir to build services for parsing, indexing, and storing large datasets with ease. The immutable and functional nature of Elixir helped prevent common bugs and improve system reliability.

The switch also made their systems more maintainable, which is crucial when dealing with constantly changing web data and analytics workflows.


4. Bleacher Report

Use Case: Live sports updates and media publishing
Why Elixir?
As a media platform delivering real-time content like game scores, highlights, and breaking news, Bleacher Report needed a tech stack that could broadcast updates instantly to millions of users. They adopted Phoenix (Elixir's web framework) and its built-in PubSub system to deliver fast, real-time features.

Their systems are now capable of pushing live updates and notifications with minimal latency, significantly improving user engagement during high-traffic sports events.


5. PagerDuty

Use Case: Real-time incident response and alerting platform
Why Elixir?
PagerDuty relies on Elixir to process mission-critical alerts with guaranteed delivery and reliability. Since downtime isn't an option, Elixir’s fault-tolerant processes ensure that even if something fails, the system self-recovers without affecting overall performance.

They use Elixir to support event aggregation and rule-based processing, ensuring engineers get the right alerts at the right time—24/7.


6. Inverse

Use Case: Digital media and online publishing
Why Elixir?
Inverse wanted to build a real-time content management system that could provide editors with live updates and readers with a seamless experience. Elixir enabled them to build an interactive CMS, handle real-time editorial changes, and deliver content instantly to users without unnecessary reloads.

They leveraged Phoenix Channels to enable features like live article previews, giving their editorial team a smoother publishing workflow.


7. Square Enix

Use Case: Online gaming backend services
Why Elixir?
As a company behind major game franchises like Final Fantasy, Square Enix uses Elixir to handle the back-end infrastructure for multiplayer features and real-time in-game events. Gaming systems require massive concurrency, fault recovery, and fast communication—all strengths of Elixir and the BEAM.

Elixir helps them manage thousands of players simultaneously in real time without compromising performance or reliability.


8. Toyota Connected

Use Case: Vehicle telematics and connected car systems
Why Elixir?
Toyota Connected is using Elixir to build systems that manage real-time vehicle data streaming. These systems need to be resilient, as data is constantly flowing in from thousands of vehicles. Elixir’s supervision trees and fault-tolerant design allow Toyota to build systems that can heal themselves automatically and ensure consistent data collection.

The result is a connected experience for car owners and a powerful analytics tool for engineers and service providers.


9. PepsiCo

Use Case: Logistics and supply chain optimization
Why Elixir?
PepsiCo has used Elixir to build internal automation tools and data pipelines that process large volumes of logistics and warehouse data. Elixir helped their teams parallelize heavy workloads, improving decision-making and reducing delays in product distribution.

Using Elixir has enabled better monitoring, reporting, and real-time alerts, bringing a more agile approach to their operations.


10. The Outline (now part of Bustle Digital Group)

Use Case: Modern content publishing
Why Elixir?
The Outline was one of the earliest media companies to adopt Phoenix for building a revolutionary CMS and publishing platform. Their development team praised Elixir’s developer ergonomics and real-time capabilities, which allowed them to experiment rapidly and deliver content in new ways.

They built systems that allowed editors to preview and update content live, making the editorial workflow faster and more interactive.


🧠 Why These Companies Chose Elixir

The common thread among all these companies is the need for high concurrency, low latency, fault-tolerant, and scalable systems—areas where Elixir excels.

Key Benefits:

  • Built-in concurrency via lightweight processes

  • Fault-tolerance from Erlang’s “let it crash” philosophy

  • Developer productivity with clear, readable syntax

  • Real-time features out of the box with Phoenix

  • Scalable architecture with minimal infrastructure


🚀 Build the Future with ElixirMasters

If global leaders like Discord and Pinterest trust Elixir, there’s a good reason you should too. Whether you need a robust web app, a real-time data system, or a fault-tolerant backend, Elixir has you covered.

At ElixirMasters, we specialize in delivering Elixir-based solutions tailored to your needs.
Partnered with BetaMize, we bring cutting-edge expertise in Elixir, Phoenix, and scalable system design.

👉 Let’s discuss your project needs today!

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