In the past, I worked in monorepo environments—the kind of large-scale setups where you’d often find yourself handling some backend tasks, setting up heavy environments, and waiting forever for the project to start. While those setups aren’t necessarily bad, stepping into the world of microfrontends feels like a breath of fresh air. It’s a different approach, and I wanted to share a bit about what I’ve learned so far.
What Even Is a Microfrontend?
The first time I came across it, I thought, "What even is this?" So, I did a bit of digging and found out it’s actually a methodology. Instead of building everything in one big application, teams focus on specific features. It’s a decentralized approach—unlike those large, complex setups that become harder to manage as they grow.
Here is what I have learned
There are several ways to implement micro frontends, depending on the needs and complexity of your app. Some of the more popular options include:
• Single-spa – a framework that lets you load multiple frontend applications together in a single page, each potentially built with a different framework.
• Module Federation – introduced in Webpack 5, this allows different apps to share and dynamically load modules from each other at runtime.
• Web Components or iframes – less common today, but still used in some cases for strict isolation or legacy reasons.
From what I’ve seen so far, single-spa makes it possible to have shared components like a header or footer imported from external apps. While that’s technically impressive, it also felt a bit odd at first — like the page was made from puzzle pieces built by different teams.
The Tradeoffs I Noticed
Working with micro frontends definitely comes with both advantages and challenges. One thing that stood out to me was how shared components like the header or footer were being pulled in from entirely separate apps. At first, it felt a bit strange — like the app was stitched together from different places, rather than built as one whole.
Another tradeoff is communication. Since different teams often own different micro frontends, even a small change to a shared piece can require syncing up with another team. In a monolith, you’d just update the code yourself. Here, it’s a slower process — more coordination, more pull requests, more alignment.
It’s a powerful architecture, but one that requires good team structures, clear ownership, and a bit of patience. Flexibility and independence come at the cost of complexity and overhead.
Final thoughts
I’m still early in my experience with micro frontends, but it’s been interesting to see how teams approach scaling frontend codebases differently. There’s clearly a lot of potential in this architecture — especially for larger projects with multiple teams — but it also comes with tradeoffs that aren’t always obvious at first.
For now, I’m keeping an open mind. It might not be something I’d reach for in a smaller project, but I’m curious to see how it plays out in a real production environment as I get more exposure to it.