Microservices is an architectural style that structures an application as a collection of small, independently deployable services.
Microservices (vs monolith) enable independent scaling, language diversity, and team autonomy. Tradeoffs: distributed tracing complexity, network overhead, ops burden. By 2026, "microservices" backlash has led to "modular monolith" patterns for many teams. Reserved for large orgs (50+ engineers) where benefits outweigh complexity.
Microservices let large organizations move faster by letting teams own and deploy their pieces independently. But they introduce real distributed-systems complexity that smaller teams should weigh carefully.
An e-commerce platform splits a monolith into separate services for catalog, cart, checkout, payments and orders. Each team owns one service and can deploy independently without coordinating with the others on every change.
Microservices are not automatically better than monoliths. They trade simplicity for independence; for small teams and small applications, a well-structured monolith is often the right call.
Start with a well-structured monolith and extract services along clear domain boundaries when team coordination becomes the bottleneck — not before.
Microservices falls under the Hosting category.
These tools put microservices into practice. Compare features, pricing, and ratings:
An open-source container orchestration platform for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.
A platform for developing, shipping, and running applications in lightweight, portable containers.
A set of protocols and tools that allows different software applications to communicate with each other, enabling integrations and data exchange.
Now that you understand Microservices, explore the best tools in this category.