Choosing an architecture for a high-load API: DeployInfra's take

"Monolith or microservices" comes up on nearly every project as soon as growth is on the table. There's no universal answer — it depends on the team, the pace of change, and the load profile.

For teams of up to 10-15 engineers, a modular monolith with clear domain boundaries almost always beats microservices on development speed and operating cost.

Breaking into microservices pays off when parts of the system genuinely need to scale independently and that's already causing real problems — for example, analytics with load spikes 50x above baseline.

Caching and queues deserve attention on their own: well-placed Redis caches and asynchronous processing via queues often remove the need for architectural complexity entirely.

The recommendation we give most often: start with a modular monolith, split out only what genuinely needs independent scaling, and don't design for load you don't have yet.