The Resurgence of Monoliths: Why Modular Monoliths Are Back on the Table for Mid-Sized European Enterprises
For nearly a decade, microservices dominated architecture conversations—often presented as the “modern” default. Yet many organizations now report that the operational overhead, distributed complexity, and coordination costs can outweigh the benefits, especially when systems and teams are not yet at hyperscale. A pragmatic alternative is gaining renewed attention: the modular monolith—a single deployable application with strong internal boundaries.
This post outlines when microservices genuinely help, when they become accidental complexity, and how devpoint can decide on the right architecture based on business needs, team size, and European operational realities—not hype.
What Changed: From Microservices as Default to Microservices as a Trade-Off
Microservices can be a strong choice when you have:
- Large engineering organizations with many autonomous teams
- High release frequency requirements across distinct domains
- Clear service boundaries and mature platform engineering
- Operational excellence: observability, SRE practices, strong CI/CD
But many mid-sized companies adopted microservices with a different reality:
- Small-to-medium teams forced into distributed systems complexity early
- Increased latency and failure modes due to network calls
- More difficult debugging, tracing, and testing across services
- Higher cost for runtime, tooling, and on-call readiness
In practice, microservices are not “bad”—they are simply expensive in organizational and operational terms. The mistake is treating them as a status symbol rather than an engineering decision.
Modular Monolith: A Sustainable Middle Path
A modular monolith aims to deliver many microservice benefits—clear domain boundaries, independent development, maintainability—while preserving the simplicity of a single deployment unit. The key is intentional modularization, not “one big ball of mud.”
Core Characteristics
- Single deployable artifact (often one application/runtime)
- Module boundaries enforced through code structure, dependency rules, and architecture tests
- Domain-driven design (DDD) or similarly explicit domain separation
- Transactional simplicity when appropriate (fewer distributed transactions)
- Operational simplicity: fewer moving parts, lower alert fatigue, easier incident response
This approach can be particularly well-suited for mid-sized enterprises that need speed and reliability without building a full platform engineering organization.
Europe-Specific Considerations: Regulation, Data Residency, and Team Distribution
European organizations often operate under constraints that shape architecture decisions:
- GDPR and data minimization: fewer distributed data copies can reduce compliance complexity
- Cross-border operations: latency and data location requirements may influence deployment topology
- Talent distribution: many teams are geographically distributed across EU regions, making coordination overhead a real cost
- Cost sensitivity: cloud spend and operational staffing often face tighter constraints than at global hyperscalers
A modular monolith can provide a stable foundation while still enabling progressive evolution—especially useful when companies must balance innovation with governance.
New Developments: Why the Conversation Is More Nuanced in 2024–2026
Several trends are making architecture decisions more context-driven:
- Platform engineering maturity: internal developer platforms can reduce microservices friction—but building them is non-trivial
- Kubernetes standardization: helps, but also introduces complexity (clusters, policies, service meshes)
- Observability progress: OpenTelemetry and modern tracing tooling improve visibility, yet distributed debugging remains costly
- AI-assisted development: accelerates coding, but increases the need for strong architecture boundaries to prevent incoherent growth
The result: more teams are adopting a “start modular, split when needed” strategy—sometimes called the monolith-first or modular-first approach.
How devpoint Can Decide: Architecture by Business Size and Change Dynamics
Rather than selecting an architecture by trend, devpoint can frame the decision around measurable factors.
1) Start With Business and Product Reality
- How frequently do we need to ship changes—and where?
- Are there truly independent domains with different scaling needs?
- Do we have a stable domain model, or are we still discovering it?
- What are the non-negotiables: uptime, auditability, time-to-market, cost?
2) Assess Organizational Readiness
- Team count and autonomy: do we have multiple teams that can own services end-to-end?
- On-call and operations: can we support 24/7 incident response for many components?
- Delivery pipeline maturity: do we have reliable CI/CD, testing, and release controls?
3) Choose an Evolutionary Architecture (Not a Final One)
A pragmatic path for mid-sized enterprises:
- Build a modular monolith with strict boundaries and clear module ownership
- Instrument early (logging, metrics, traces) to understand performance and coupling
- Extract services only when forced by scaling, team autonomy, or deployment independence needs
- Prefer “well-chosen cuts”: extract one domain at a time with clear interfaces and data ownership
Philosophical Lens: Pragmatism Over Ideology
In philosophy, the pragmatic tradition emphasizes outcomes over rigid doctrine: choose ideas that work in practice for a given context. Software architecture benefits from the same stance. Microservices are neither inherently “advanced” nor inherently “over-engineering.” A modular monolith is not “going backward.” Both are tools—valuable when aligned with the realities of people, processes, and product goals.
Practical Checklist: When Modular Monoliths Often Win
- Your engineering organization is small-to-midsize and wants fast iteration
- You need lower operational overhead and simpler incident management
- Your domains are still evolving and you want to avoid premature boundaries
- You benefit from simpler data consistency and fewer distributed workflows
Conclusion
The renewed interest in modular monoliths is less a “comeback” and more a correction: many organizations are rediscovering that simplicity can be a competitive advantage. For mid-sized enterprises—particularly across Europe’s regulatory and operational landscape—a modular monolith can be a sustainable default that keeps complexity proportional to business value.
Summary (2 sentences)
Microservices can unlock autonomy and scale, but they often impose significant operational and organizational costs that mid-sized enterprises may not be ready—or need—to pay. A modular monolith offers a pragmatic middle path: strong internal boundaries with simpler deployment and governance, while still allowing future service extraction when justified.
What is your perspective—have you experienced microservices as acceleration, or as complexity? If you were starting a new product in a mid-sized European company today, would you choose a modular monolith first, and what would make you change your mind?