Monolith isn’t a dirty word. And microservices aren’t a silver bullet.
Monolith¶
- ✅ Simple development and deployment
- ✅ No network latency between services
- ✅ Simple debugging
- ✅ One database, simple transactions
- ❌ Scales as a whole
- ❌ One team, one deploy
- ❌ Technologically homogeneous
Microservices¶
- ✅ Independent deployment
- ✅ Per-service scaling
- ✅ Technology diversity
- ✅ Failure isolation
- ❌ Distributed system complexity
- ❌ Network latency
- ❌ Distributed transactions
- ❌ Need DevOps maturity
When Monolith¶
- Small team (<10 developers)
- Early stage startup
- Unclear domain boundaries
- Want to ship fast
When Microservices¶
- Large team (>20 developers)
- Clear domain boundaries
- Need independent deployment
- Different scaling requirements per service
Modular Monolith — Best of Both¶
Monolith with clear modules/bounded contexts. You can split it into microservices later if needed.
Rule¶
Start with a monolith. Split when it hurts (not before). Microservices is not a goal — it’s a solution to a specific problem.
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