[alexdowad]

I've worked on numerous Rails projects since 2010, and it has lots of strengths, but I would really hesitate to base a new project on Rails.

The benefits of using a big framework (which you alluded to in your question) are easy to see in the short term. The pain comes in the long term.

Of course, there's no panacea. Your current "simple and low-dependency" approach has its own challenges, so choose your poison.