Architecture decisions can be challenging. What works well for an app today may become harder to maintain and scale as it grows. Choosing an architecture that fits your product can save considerable time and effort.
Let’s explore modular monolith and microservices architectures through a simple shopping app to understand how they work.
Modular monolith: separate modules, deployed together
- Each feature has its own module with clear responsibilities.
- All modules run inside the same application, communicate through internal function calls.
- All modules are deployed together as one application.
- Each module manages its own data, often within a shared database.
Microservices: separate services, deployed independently
- In this example, each feature has its own independent service with clear responsibilities. (In practice, service boundaries follow business capabilities, so not every feature needs its own microservice.)
- Microservices communicate over a network using APIs or messages.
- Each microservice is deployed independently.
- Each microservice manages its own data.
Choosing the Right Architecture
Modular Monolith: Choose when you want clear module boundaries with simpler development, deployment, and maintenance, and your application can be deployed and scaled as a whole.
Microservices: Choose when parts of your application need independent deployment or scaling, and your team can manage the additional complexity of running separate services.
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