Micro-Monolith: The Best of Both Worlds in App Architecture

If you're struggling to decide between monolithic and microservices architectures for your application, here's some good news: You don't have to choose. By opting for a micro-monolith architecture, you can use both approaches at the same time.

Intrigued? Or just curious about how one builds an app that is both microservices-based and monolithic? Read on as we explain what micro-monolith architectures are, how they work, and why you may or may not want to adopt one when creating your next application.

What Is a Micro-Monolith Architecture?

A micro-monolith architecture is an application design that integrates some functionality as microservices while adopting a monolithic approach to building out other functionality.

For example, developers might create microservices to implement various front-end components within a web application. One microservice might render the user-facing content while another lets users search the site and a third runs the app's shopping cart. But on the back end, everything runs as a single service.

The microservices of a micro-monolith application that are not implemented as microservices are often called microliths. Microliths are more modular than a traditional monolithic application, in which everything is implemented as a single service and codebase. But they're larger than conventional microservices, and they typically support a wider range of functionality.

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Aren't Microliths Just Microservices by Another Name?

If you're thinking that microliths sound a lot like microservices that just happen to cover more functionality than their neighbors, you're not exactly wrong. There are no-hard-and-fast rules about how "big" each microservice should be, or about whether some microservices can do more than others within the same application.

Viewed from that perspective, micro-monoliths are arguably just a specialized type of microservices architecture.

But we're not here to split straws about where a microservice ends and a microlith begins. The important thing is that by opting for a micro-monlith architecture, you can be more deliberate about having some components of your application be more modular than others.

Benefits of Using Microservices and Microliths Together

The main reason why you might want to adopt a micro-monolith architecture is that it provides the best of both worlds from an application architecture standpoint. You get the flexibility and modularity of microservices. At the same time, you don't have to contend with all of the complexity that comes with a full-blown microservices architecture.

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Put another way, micro-monolith architectures are beneficial because they give developers the power to implement microservices where they make sense, while sticking with a more monolithic design elsewhere.

This is important because traditionally, microservices and monoliths were all-or-nothing affairs. Either you built an entirely distributed, microservices-based app, or you didn't. The micro-monolith approach frees developers from having to make this binary choice.

Challenges of Micro-Monolithic Architectures

That said, don't expect a micro-monolithic approach to solve all of your application development and deployment woes. This type of architecture presents some special challenges of its own, including:

So, while micro-monoliths enable a higher degree of flexibility, they also demand extra-careful analysis and planning. If you make the wrong choices about how to design this type of app, you can end up with the worst of both worlds — the complexity of microservices and the rigidity of a monolith.

Should You Use Micro-Monoliths?

Whether a micro-monolithic architecture makes sense for your organization depends on a few key factors:

Conclusion: Finding the Middle Way Between Microservices and Monoliths

If a traditional microservices or monolithic architecture works for you, by all means continue what you're doing. But if you find yourself struggling to manage the complexity of microservices or are hampered by a monolithic app that is too inflexible or expansive, consider the micro-monolith approach as a happy medium.