When Microservices Are a Bad Idea

On paper, microservices sound wonderful. They are modular, scalable, and fault tolerant. A lot of companies have had great success using this model, so microservices might naturally seem to be the superior architecture and the best way to start new applications.

However, most firms that have succeeded with microservices did not begin with them. Consider the examples of Airbnb and Twitter, which went the microservice route after outgrowing their monoliths and are now battling its complexities. Even successful companies that use microservices appear to still be figuring out the best way to make them work. It is evident that microservices come with their share of tradeoffs.