Microfrontend Architecture: What, Why, and How to Use It

Customer demands are evolving, business needs are evolving as well, so the tech world should also evolve to keep up. Monolithic, all-in-one systems once ruled, but the digital age demanded speed and scalability. Microservices answered the call, breaking back-ends into independent modules, giving teams the agility to keep up with growing demands. The next natural step was to bring the same modular approach to the front-end, freeing teams to build, scale, and innovate without limits.

In this article, we’ll cover the what, why, and how of microfrontends: what they are, why they’re transforming front-end development at scale, and how to harness microfrontends’ benefits to tackle business challenges based on the expertise of the Expert Soft team.

Quick Tips for Busy People

If you’re short of time, here’s what is microfrontend architecture in a nutshell.

• What is it? A modular approach that breaks down the front-end of a single application into independently deployable components, enabling greater flexibility and scalability.
• Why use it? Enables faster deployments, streamlined collaboration, and improved maintenance, simplifying developer workflows.
• When is it suitable? Best for large-scale, complex projects needing seamless integration and independent team workflows.
• How to implement it? Define microfrontends boundaries, choose suitable frameworks, use blue-green deployment for updates, and monitor performance stability.

Now, let’s drill down a bit further into why microfrontends are a game-changer for enterprise software.

What: Microfrontend Basics

So, what is microfrontend? Microfrontends rethink the way to build classic front-end development by breaking up monolithic application front-ends into smaller, manageable chunks. By the microfrontend definition, each module is an independent component and can be integrated perfectly into the web app interface to provide consistent visual and functional cohesion throughout the application.

Microfrontends adoption is steadily increasing as more and more companies understand their potential in scalability and how to speed up development cycles. By embracing microfrontend architecture, for example, Spotify achieved a 50% reduction in build time and 30% more frequent deployment.

Architecture specifics

In essence, each microfrontend interacts with the centralized configuration and registry, working as a control hub for managing the connections and interactions of the diverse components. The registry contains important information, such as the URLs for the bundles and settings in the configuration, making sure every microfrontend is properly hooked with its resources. Individual components are thus freely updated, deployed, and scaled without impacting other parts of the system.

Let’s look at an example of how our client — a Big 3 credit rating agency — established a microfrontend workflow.

Relying on our expertise in front-end development services, we achieved system flexibility and streamlined development and deployment processes, which are crucial for this large-scale project, operating millions of financial data daily.

Why: Microfrontends Value

As you can see from the microfrontends definition, the approach equipped companies with practical solutions to real-world challenges, offering flexibility, efficiency, and scalability. Backed by examples from our project, here are five key microfrontend benefits.

To better illustrate the value of microfrontends, below we’ll provide the comparison table of monolith and microfrontend approaches.

This comparison highlights clear microfrontends benefits as they deliver flexibility and efficiency, making them a superior choice for modern, scalable software development.

When: Does Your Business Need Microfrontends?

Not every project needs microfrontends, as they do introduce an extra layer of complexity. For example, in small or simple applications, the extra overhead of maintaining separate repositories, pipelines, and coordination between the modules might be more than what’s gained from these benefits.

Microfrontends are best suited for:

Checklist for decision-making

Deciding whether microfrontends are the right choice begins with a look at the specific challenges of your business. The questions below can help you better understand whether your solution lies in microfrontend architecture.

• Do you face challenges with long development cycles due to a tightly coupled front-end architecture?
• Is your team struggling to maintain agility and adapt quickly to changing business requirements?
• Do your development teams frequently experience bottlenecks while waiting for other teams to complete their tasks?
• Is cross-team coordination slowing down the pace of innovation in your projects?
• Is it becoming increasingly difficult to debug and maintain your growing codebase?
• Do you experience challenges ensuring consistent user experience while scaling and evolving your application?
• Is your application struggling with performance issues due to the size and complexity of your current front-end?
• Do you find it hard to quantify the ROI of your current architecture because of missed opportunities for faster releases or team independence?

If you answer “yes” to most of the questions, this is a sign to dig deeper into your system to assess how microfrontends can affect it. If you need experienced guidance along the way to avoid common pitfalls, our team at Expert Soft can help, just contact us. Or at least start with the section below.

How: Microfrontends Best Practices

While microfrontends are designed to boost development with their benefits, the approach requires a solid foundation and proper implementation from the start to function correctly. Here are some tips.

Clear microfrontends boundaries

Clearly defining the scope and responsibilities of each microfrontend is important to ensure that development runs smoothly, dependency overlaps are avoided, and integration challenges are minimized. Each module should focus on a specific functionality so that teams can work independently without interfering with each other. Proper decoupling also ensures minimal interactions between modules, reducing the risk of bottlenecks during development or deployment.

Suitable tech framework

There is no universal or “best-suited” framework for microfrontends. The choice, as usual, depends on project needs, existing tech stack, and team expertise. Frameworks commonly in use include:

SPA and microfrontend bundle

By bundling SPA and microfrontends, you can leverage the benefits of both approaches, providing a fast and smooth user experience without page reloads with the flexibility of independently deployable modules. This integration allows for the dynamic loading of only the needed modules, which results in resource savings and smoother performance, especially for data-intensive applications.

Taking the same path for our client, we were able to handle large datasets efficiently. This was achieved by dynamically loading only the necessary components, ensuring a responsive user experience even under heavy data loads. This modular design also allowed individual teams to optimize their components independently, further enhancing performance and scalability.

Front-end storybook

When separate teams work on distinct microfrontends, inconsistencies in style and user experience can arise. It may happen due to differing interpretations of requirements or the absence of shared guidelines. Without a unified design system, the application will look fragmented, with components differing in appearance, behavior, or responsiveness, which impairs the user from a coherent user experience.

Standardization through a front-end Storybook, a tool for building and documenting UI components in isolation, can be a solution here. For example, in a project for a global medical technology leader, implementing the Storybook ensured consistent UI across projects, improved code maintainability, and reduced development time through reusable components.

Efficient monitoring and logging

Proper monitoring and logging are critical to ensuring system reliability, especially in applications with high traffic or complex architectures like microfrontends. It helps with tracking performance metrics and identifying possible issues.

In our project, Expert Soft implemented a strong logging system that tracked detailed data on each of the microfrontends. This enabled the team to track performance in real time, trace issues during peaks in traffic easily, and resolve them without affecting the rest of the application.

With all these said, all best practices mentioned above help maximize the microfrontends benefits, minimize the risks, and ensure the applications are scalable and efficient, while tailor-made for specific needs.

To Sum Up

Microfrontends are changing the game for enterprise software, offering a smarter way to scale features, deploy updates seamlessly, and let teams work independently without causing bottlenecks. By breaking down applications into smaller, self-contained modules, businesses can tackle complex challenges like improving performance, minimizing downtime, and enhancing collaboration between teams.

If you’re weighing whether microfrontends would work for your existing infrastructure, Expert Soft can help you evaluate your needs and look into solutions that would suit your business. Whether it’s microfrontends or any other approach, we’ll find the best fit to help you meet your goals. Let’s chat!