Concept / Term · Established
Application architecture styles
A monolith ships as one tightly connected application; microservices split business capabilities into smaller services that can be deployed independently.
Field note
A monolith deploys most application capabilities as one unit. Microservices divide them into independently deployable services with explicit boundaries and network communication.
“Monolith” became a contrast term as service-oriented and microservice architectures grew. It is descriptive, not automatically negative: a well-structured monolith can be the simpler design.
The choice affects team ownership, release coordination, data consistency, observability and the amount of operational infrastructure required.
Microservices can improve independent scaling and ownership, but they exchange code complexity for distributed-systems complexity.
In a sentence“We kept the core product as a modular monolith and separated only the high-volume notification service.”
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