- Mohammad
- 23 May, 2025
- 7 min read
Monoliths vs Microservices for MVPs: What to choose?
My First Product, My First Panic: Choosing the Right Architecture
I still remember the late-night Slack messages, the endless whiteboard sessions, and that gut-wrenching feeling in my stomach when we launched our first MVP — and it crashed. Not from traffic, but from complexity. I was a first-time founder trying to do everything right. Somewhere between reading Hacker News threads and mimicking how Uber scaled, I convinced my team to start with microservices.
Big mistake.
The choice between Monoliths vs Microservices for MVPs isn’t just technical. It’s emotional, strategic, and, frankly, existential for early-stage startups. In this guide, I’m not here to throw tech jargon at you — I’m here to share the real, gritty, behind-the-scenes lessons from the trenches.
Why This Topic Matters to Founders
If you’re building your MVP, chances are you’re juggling limited funds, an impatient market, and an ambitious product vision. You need to move fast — but not so fast you break things that matter. Your architecture decision isn’t just about performance. It affects:
- Time to market
- Developer velocity
- Tech debt
- Fundraising narrative
- User satisfaction
Make the wrong call, and your MVP could become a money pit. Make the right one, and you’ll ship faster, validate quicker, and sleep a little better.
What Is a Monolith (And Why It’s Not a Dirty Word)?
Definition
A monolithic architecture is a single, unified codebase that handles all aspects of your application: frontend, backend, database operations, and business logic.
✅ Pros of Starting With a Monolith
- Speed of development: Fewer moving parts means faster iteration.
- Simple deployment: One build. One deploy. No orchestration.
- Lower cost: Less infrastructure complexity means lower AWS bills and fewer DevOps headaches.
- Easier debugging: Everything’s in one place. No API hopscotch.
❌ Cons of a Monolith (As You Scale)
- Hard to maintain: One change could break everything.
- Team bottlenecks: Developers step on each other’s toes.
- Scaling limits: Performance issues in one area can affect the whole system.
What Are Microservices (And Why Founders Love to Hate Them)?
Definition
A microservices architecture breaks your app into small, independent services — each responsible for a specific business capability and communicating over APIs.
✅ Pros of Microservices
- Independent deployment: Release features faster without affecting the whole system.
- Tech flexibility: Use the best language/tool for each service.
- Scalability: Scale services independently.
- Fault isolation: One service crashing won’t bring the entire system down.
❌ Cons of Microservices
- Infrastructure complexity: You’ll need CI/CD, service discovery, orchestration (hello Kubernetes).
- Testing overhead: Integration testing becomes a nightmare.
- DevOps burden: More services = more headaches.
- Higher cost: Complexity often demands more cloud resources and senior engineers.
My MVP Architecture Journey (With Mistakes You Should Avoid)
We launched with microservices. I had read all the right blog posts. Everyone from Amazon to Airbnb did it, so it must be the right move.
Here’s what I learned — the hard way:
Lesson 1: Microservices cost more than money
Our MVP took 4 months longer to launch because we were too busy setting up Kubernetes and worrying about Docker images. When we finally shipped, we had bugs across services that were hard to trace.
Lesson 2: Monoliths move faster — early on
We rebuilt the MVP as a monolith. Within 2 weeks, we were shipping new features weekly and onboarding beta users.
Lesson 3: Refactoring is not failure
Eventually, we did migrate to microservices — after we found product-market fit. And guess what? It was easier. We had user data, real-world traffic patterns, and money to hire experienced backend engineers.
”Before deciding on the right architecture, it’s crucial to understand the fundamentals of MVP development.”
So… Monoliths vs Microservices for MVPs?
Consider Team Size
- Solo or <5 devs? Go Monolith.
-
10 engineers? Microservices may make sense, but only if you’ve validated the product.
Think About Speed
- You want to get feedback fast. Monoliths win here.
Plan for Refactoring, Not Perfection
- Your MVP isn’t your final product. Choose an architecture that gets you to market, not to Mars.
”Alongside architecture, selecting the right frontend framework can also impact your MVP’s velocity. Here’s our deep dive on choosing the right framework for your MVP.”
Hybrid Models: The “Modular Monolith” (Best of Both Worlds?)
Heard of the modular monolith? It’s how we actually built our second startup. Here’s why:
- Monolith codebase, but with enforced domain separation.
- Easy to test and deploy.
- Designed to be split into microservices later, without a full rewrite.
Tools that helped:
- Laravel modules
- Rails engines
- DDD principles in NestJS
Visual Guide to Architecture Choices
[Insert comparison diagram: Monolith → Modular Monolith → Microservices transition path]
Real Startup Stories
🏢 Startup A: Scaled Too Early
Built with microservices from day one. Took 8 months to launch. Never hit product-market fit. Closed down.
Startup B: Scrappy Monolith
Built a monolith MVP in 3 weeks. Pivoted twice. Hit PMF in month 6. Migrated to microservices in year 2. Raised Series A.
Startup C: Hybrid Monolith
Used modular monolith. Gradually transitioned critical parts to microservices. Reduced downtime by 80%.
Technical Considerations for Founders
- Deployment strategy: Heroku is great for monoliths. AWS ECS or GKE for microservices.
- Monitoring: Start with Sentry and Datadog, scale to distributed tracing later.
- Testing: Unit + integration tests for monoliths; contract testing becomes vital in microservices.
Cost Implications
| Monolith | Microservices | |
|---|---|---|
| Initial Dev Time | ✅ Fast | ❌ Slow |
| Infra Cost | ✅ Low | ❌ High |
| DevOps Need | ✅ Minimal | ❌ Heavy |
| Long-term Scale | ❌ May struggle | ✅ Flexible |
Final Thoughts: You’re Not Building Uber (Yet)
Choosing monoliths vs microservices for MVPs is not a binary decision. It’s a question of stage, team, and traction. You’re not building Uber. You’re validating a hunch.
Start simple. Ship fast. Learn faster.
When it’s time to scale, you’ll know. And by then, you’ll have customers, revenue, and clarity.
TL;DR for the Busy Founder
- MVP? Start with a monolith.
- Consider modular monoliths for cleaner code.
- Microservices = complexity. Don’t go there unless you must.
- Your job isn’t to build scalable systems. It’s to build a scalable business.
📬 Have questions? Email me or tweet at me — I reply to all DMs.
📘 Want more like this? Check out:
“Beyond microservices, some startups explore serverless as a scalable solution — here’s our take on why serverless is the future.”
This post was written from the ashes of two failed architectures, one successful pivot, and one very tired founder.
