Why You (Probably) Shouldn’t Start Your Project with Microservices

Let’s be honest — if you’ve browsed job posts or followed tech influencers recently, you’ve probably felt a bit of FOMO. Everyone’s talking about microservices, Kubernetes, event-driven architectures, distributed tracing, and enough acronyms to fill a startup pitch deck.

It’s almost like if your system isn’t built on microservices, you’re doing it wrong. Right?

Well, not exactly.

In this post, I want to challenge this mindset. Not because microservices are bad — they’re powerful and necessary in the right context. But because starting a new project with microservices often introduces way more pain than gain.

Let’s talk about why.

The Illusion of Microservice Superpowers

There’s this shiny aura around microservices — as if breaking a system into dozens of little independent services automatically makes your app scalable, modern, and “enterprise-grade”.

What we often don’t hear is that many companies, including giants like Amazon, have started migrating parts of their systems back to monolithic architectures — and saving millions doing so.

That’s right. The same companies that popularized microservices are now rethinking them.

Monoliths Aren’t Evil — Just Misunderstood

Let’s step back.

A monolith is just a system where everything runs in the same process: customer registration, order processing, reporting — all bundled up. Traditionally, you’ve got one codebase and one database.

And you know what? That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Pros of Monoliths:

Easy to build, test, and deploy
Great for early-stage products
Simple to scale vertically (more CPU/RAM) or even horizontally (via replicas and a load balancer)

Cons:

Hard to scale just one part of the system
Tight coupling between components
Collaboration bottlenecks when too many developers are stepping on each other’s toes in the same repo

These drawbacks become more pronounced as you grow, but in the beginning? A well-structured monolith might be your best friend.

Microservices: Power, at a Cost

Microservices bring flexibility and scalability — but also complexity.

Every microservice needs:

Its own codebase
Its own database
Its own CI/CD pipeline
Its own monitoring, logging, tracing setup
A clear communication strategy (REST, gRPC, messaging, etc.)
Infrastructure orchestration (containers, service discovery, failover, retries...)

That’s a lot to manage — especially when your product isn’t even validated yet.

In early development, your biggest priority should be shipping quickly and validating your idea, not building a distributed system worthy of a Netflix tech talk.

3 Reasons to Avoid Microservices at the Start

Let me break it down.

1. Too Much Complexity, Too Soon

Microservices force you to make architectural decisions early — often before you fully understand your business domain.

Worse, you’ll spend weeks setting up infra when you should be building features and getting feedback.

2. They’re Not for Everyone

Microservices were made to solve problems of scale — both system and team scale.

If you’re working with a small dev team (or alone), you don’t need 15 services, 15 Git repos, and 15 headaches. You need one well-written app that’s easy to reason about.

3. You Don’t Know the Domain Yet

In the beginning, the business domain is a moving target. You’re still figuring things out. If you split the system too early, you’ll likely create boundaries that don’t reflect real business responsibilities — and that leads to endless refactoring.

The Smarter Path: Modular Monoliths

Here’s a better approach: start with a modular monolith.

Think of it like this: instead of one big ball of code, you structure your application as modules, each with a clear responsibility. These modules represent bounded contexts — areas of your domain that are cohesive and self-contained.

For example, in an e-commerce system:

A module for Product Catalog
Another for Order Management
One for Payments
And so on

Each module can have:

Its own domain model
Its own business rules
Its own unit and integration tests
Even its own schema (within the same database)

You get the simplicity of a monolith, with the organization of a well-thought-out architecture.

And here's the kicker: when the time comes, and if your team and product truly need it, you can start extracting these modules into microservices. Cleanly. Safely. With confidence.

Evolve, Don’t Overengineer

There’s a time and place for microservices. If you’re a huge company with hundreds of engineers, separate teams, and scalability issues — go for it.

But if you’re building something new — a startup MVP, a side project, a client system — start with what’s simple and sustainable.

Build a modular monolith. Learn the domain. Deliver value. Then evolve.

That’s how software grows with your understanding — instead of collapsing under complexity.

Let’s stop chasing hype and start building smarter.