# Development
Microservices vs Monolith: Which Architecture Fits Your Business?
Red Rocket TeamJan 23, 20254 min read
In This Article
Understanding What Monolithic Software Architecture Is What's the Difference Between Monolithic and Microservices? Microservices Implementation Issues – What Can Go Wrong? Tools for Managing Microservices and Monolithic Systems Cost Comparison: Microservices vs Monolithic Architecture Final Thoughts
Most people nowadays are well aware that creating business application software is quite a challenging task. Why is it so? When creating software from scratch, developers have to take into account dozens of factors to get a truly high-quality product at the end. With the advent of advanced AI tools, their work has become easier, but there are still many tasks that only a human brain can do.
For example, IT professionals often wonder what architecture is best to apply to a project. Usually, the most common options are microservices and monolithic. This has caused many people to split into two camps that cannot definitively pick a winner in the microservice vs monolithic architecture pairing.
Simply speaking, a correctly chosen architecture ensures that the software will work well in all aspects. However, for the final decision, you need to analyze many factors of a particular project that the development team is working on. In this article, we would like to take a detailed look at these two popular architectures to help you understand which system suits your business best.
Understanding What Monolithic Software Architecture Is
Actually, monolithic architecture can be called a traditional approach among modern developers. Why? Because all software is created by one complex, having a common code base. This system implies that all elements are unified, including:
- User interface.
- Business logic.
- Data access.
- And much more.
The monolithic system can be compared to many things well-known to all people. For example, imagine one huge cake that has cream, crusts, and different fillings. This is exactly how the monolithic architecture works because the product is transformed from different parts into one whole.
One of the key features of the monolith is the presence of a single code base. This means that all of the application source code is in one place, making it easier to understand and develop. Launching and updating a product on a monolithic architecture requires minimal effort because all the components are together.
What's the Difference Between Monolithic and Microservices?
Before we start a detailed comparison of these two key architectures for software development, we want to briefly talk about microservices. This is an approach when a program is divided into different autonomous services. Separate elements are responsible for certain functions and help the created software to work as a whole. If we compare a monolithic architecture to a big cake, then we can compare microservices to a set of small cakes or cupcakes.
So, we suggest finally moving on to a detailed comparison of microservices vs monolithic architecture. We have prepared the table below where we will describe the main functions, features, advantages, and disadvantages of each software architecture.
Obviously, you may ask why you should even understand the difference between these two architectures. Quite simply, because each project has its own characteristics and the right architecture will save you time and budget.
Microservices Implementation Issues – What Can Go Wrong?
Now you know more about the advantages of monolithic architecture and microservices systems. As you may have already realized, microservices are a more complex solution for developers, and a number of difficulties may arise during their implementation. Do you want to know what difficulties developers face most often while developing applications with microservices architecture?
- Managing multiple services simultaneously. Multiple services of a microservices architecture can quickly grow tedious to manage. Services operate independently, and each needs to be meticulously monitored, deployed, and scaled in order to run without interruption.
- Maintaining consistency between services. Microservices are distributed, and hence, ensuring consistency between them is a challenge. Advanced coordination is necessary for transactions covering multiple services so their data is not compromised.
- Security among systems. With microservices architectures, you expose more endpoints, and so you increase the attack surface. In order to communicate properly, services need robust authentication, encryption, and other security methods.
For beginners, it may seem that in this approach, all services act independently and chaotically. Actually, this is not true at all because leading developers competently develop the connection between all the blocks. If you manage to cope with all the difficulties, your applications will work better. This is really true, as many world-famous companies are gradually moving to this architecture. For example, Netflix initially used monolith system and over time switched to microservices.
Tools for Managing Microservices and Monolithic Systems
Certainly, many things will depend on your choice of software architecture, including the technical stack. There are many tools available to help development teams manage microservices and monolithic systems. Let's talk more about them!
What tools do we need to collaborate, orchestrate, and monitor distributed microservices? Managing distributed architecture is wondrous, and Compass is a nice tool to have to provide visibility on the service level dependencies and help with the integration. Documentation plus knowledge sharing is boosted by Confluence, giving teams a chance to work together on service-specific configurations, workflows, and troubleshooting guides. Jira Software is a great fit for project management in that it provides teams with the ability to track issues, plan sprints, and manage tasks.
Now, let us tell you what tools IT professionals use to work with applications with monolithic architectures. Version control systems such as Git are incredibly important for tracking changes and for working on the biggest and most complex projects. One of the favorite of many modern people's CI/CD tools is Jenkins, which helps build, test, and deploy monolithic applications. New Relic gives teams deep visibility into application metrics for monitoring performance, addressing bottlenecks, and optimizing resources.
Cost Comparison: Microservices vs Monolithic Architecture
It's no secret that developing medium-sized applications can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Project managers often think about how to reduce costs without sacrificing software quality or functionality. That is why it is very important to compare the cost of such architectures as monolith and microservices.
The monolithic architecture is typically cheaper to develop upfront. Everything is in one codebase, which means developers require fewer resources, simpler infrastructure, and lower management overhead. They are easy to develop and deploy, reducing upfront costs, and so they can be a good choice for startups or small projects.
As you can realize, microservices are more expensive in software development. Why is it so? The costs are driven by the need for multiple teams, specialized tools, and a whole lot of infrastructure with containerization and orchestration platforms like Kubernetes.
Final thoughts
The decision to choose between a monolithic vs microservice system is an inseparable part of development, affecting the long-term well-being of the project. Each of these structures has its unique advantages and challenges.
In simple words, developers usually use monolithic systems in software development when they plan to build a small or medium-sized application. If you hope for ambitious software, you should definitely consider a microservice architecture.
Frequently asked questions
What is monolithic architecture in software creation?
Monolithic architecture is a simple and straightforward development model that is particularly suitable for small and medium-sized projects. However, with increasing complexity and scale, there may be limitations and increased risks.
What does microservices architecture mean in digital product development?
Microservice architecture is a solution for more complex and large-scale projects where flexibility, development independence, and resilience to failure are key requirements. However, its successful implementation requires careful management of communication between services.
Which kind of architecture is cheaper?
First of all, you should realize that everything depends on the specific project and technical requirements. If you imagine two approximately identical applications with different architectures, monolithic applications usually cost less. The cost reduction is achieved due to less work. In this case, developers only have to create the code base once.
