When Not to Use Microservices
Microservices solve organizational problems more often than technical ones. Knowing when a modular monolith is the better call.
Microservices exist to let independent teams ship independently. If you don't have independent teams, you're mostly signing up for the operational overhead of a distributed system — network calls, versioning, deployment coordination — without the organizational benefit that justifies it.
A well-structured modular monolith gets you most of the maintainability benefits people associate with microservices — clear boundaries, independent testing, replaceable modules — without the distributed systems tax. It's also far easier to split apart later, once real usage patterns reveal where the actual seams should be.
The decision worth making deliberately, rather than by default, is: are we solving a team-scaling problem or a technical problem. Microservices are a strong answer to the first and often the wrong answer to the second.
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