As your application grows, a single backend often turns into a tangled mess — harder to scale, test, and deploy. That’s where microservice architecture comes in. Instead of one large codebase, you split your app into independent, loosely coupled services — each handling one specific business function (like users, products, or orders). In this blog, we’ll build a simple microservice-based system using: π’ Node.js + Express — for APIs π MongoDB — as individual service databases π³ Docker Compose — to run them together π§ What Are Microservices? Microservices are small, autonomous services that communicate over APIs. Each service: Has its own database Runs independently Can be scaled or deployed separately Example: A shopping app might have: π€ User Service → handles signup/login π¦ Product Service → manages items π Order Service → processes purchases Instead of one app handling all three, you split them like this: [User Service] ...