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Microservices architecture is a way of building apps as a collection of small, independent services that each handle one specific task and communicate with each other.
Why It Matters
Why Founders Should Care About This Term:
- Speeds up development by allowing parallel work on independent components
- Makes scaling easier since each service can scale separately
- Reduces risk by isolating failures to single components
- Improves flexibility to adopt new tech stacks or languages per service
- Simplifies maintenance and faster deployments
Use This Term When...
- Planning app infrastructure and backend architecture
- Building complex apps with many different features or modules
- Working with distributed teams or scaling development
- Designing for high availability and fault tolerance
- Migrating from monolithic systems to a modular setup
Real-World Example
In one of our projects, we used microservices architecture to separate user authentication, payments, and notifications into independent services. This made the app more scalable and allowed faster feature updates without affecting the whole system.
Founder Insight
Many startups jump into microservices too early. For simpler apps, a monolithic approach may be faster to launch. Microservices shine when your app is large or needs to scale fast.
Key Metrics / Concepts
- Service Latency – Time it takes for one microservice to respond to another.
- Error Isolation – Ability to contain failures within a single service.
- Deployment Frequency – How often individual services can be updated independently.
- Service Health Checks – Monitoring that ensures each service is alive and responsive.
- API Contracts – Rules that define how services talk to each other.
Tools & Technologies
- Docker – Containers that run each microservice in isolation.
- Kubernetes – Manages deployment, scaling, and health of services.
- Postman – Useful for testing API communication between services.
What’s Next / Future Trends
With AI-driven orchestration and edge computing, microservices are moving toward more intelligent, self-healing systems. Expect trends in serverless functions, observability, and auto-scaling capabilities.
Related Terms
- App Backend – Where microservices are implemented.
- API Integration – Microservices use APIs to communicate.
- DevOps – Essential for managing microservice deployments.
- Cloud Hosting – Needed for scalable microservices.
- REST API – Common way microservices interact.
Helpful Videos / Articles / Pages
Call to Action
Not sure if microservices are right for your app? Book a discovery call and we’ll help map the best architecture for your product.