[tta_listen_btn]
July 24 2025
The micro-frontend architecture is a game-changing approach, offering significant organizational stability, with its effectiveness largely dependent on the specific use case. Moreover, the component-driven development and micro-frontends are useful, but neither works for every project. You need to choose the right one based on your needs. Here, the responsibility lies with the business owner to assess the needs against the benefits of these strategies and implement them promptly.
Micro-frontend architecture is an immensely valuable approach for growing organizations, as they frequently encounter bottlenecks and challenges at the frontend, even with an optimized backend. This is understandable, as continuously tweaking the codebase to accommodate frequent feature additions and upgrades can be inefficient. The modular design significantly mitigates the impact of updates and changes to a single component on the overall codebase.
In this article, we will explore the nuances of micro-frontend architecture, providing you with all the necessary insights for its effective implementation. By the end, you will have a clear understanding of whether this architectural model is the right fit for your frontend. Let’s dive in:
What is Micro-frontend Architecture?
Micro-frontend architecture is a method where a traditionally monolithic frontend codebase is broken down into smaller, more manageable apps, typically aligned with various business domains. These smaller components come together to form a cohesive front-end interface that delivers an exceptional user experience. Furthermore, you will recognize it’s time to adopt this architecture when you need to expand features and functionalities, but a bloated frontend codebase demands disproportionate resources to manage.
Before the rise of micro-frontend architecture, web-application development typically involved a monolithic frontend sitting on top of a microservices backend. As data from multiple microservices was integrated, things became increasingly complex. For example, if one microservice underwent an upgrade, the frontend would require substantial changes. As developers often avoided such cumbersome tasks, this scenario would eventually spiral out of control, making a complete overhaul the only practical solution.
The micro-frontend framework enables cross-functional teams to manage the end-to-end development and deployment of individual micro-applications. Some of the famous apps use micro-frontend architecture.
11 Benefits of Adopting Micro-Frontend Architecture
While there are several methods to implement micro frontends, let’s first explore the key benefits of using this architecture for large-scale projects.
Design and Development Flexibility
A micro-frontend framework empowers teams to select the most suitable tech stack for their microservices, enhancing their sense of ownership. This accelerates decision-making, expedites development cycles, and enriches features, fostering a more dynamic and efficient development process.
Decoupled Codebases
By segmenting components, micro-frontend architecture simplifies the management and modification of codebases. Isolated team codes streamline development, testing, and deployment, thereby reinforcing team autonomy and the technology-agnostic nature of micro-apps.
Prioritizing Native Browser Over Custom APIs
Web browsers play a pivotal role in shaping the user experience. Micro-frontend principles leverage simple browser events for communication, making it easier to manage than complex APIs. This approach also ensures quicker rendering, even with slower internet connections or sluggish browsers.
Automation
As projects grow, automation becomes essential. Micro-frontends enable the establishment of a rapid feedback loop and optimization of CI/CD pipelines. Automation saves valuable time, allowing teams to focus on more critical tasks and enhancing overall productivity.
Fault Isolation
Micro-frontend architecture helps build resilient applications. If one micro app encounters an issue, it does not disrupt the entire system. This fault isolation results in consistent app performance, even in the face of glitches, ensuring “graceful service degradation.”
Scalability
The modular and decoupled nature of micro frontends offers unparalleled scalability. Teams can easily scale features up or down, adopting an iterative approach to growth and expansion. The assurance that changes to one micro frontend won’t impact others and encourages continuous improvement.
Faster Build Time
With independent development and release cycles for each micro frontend, parallel development becomes possible. This reduces administrative effort and minimizes downtime, enabling rapid updates and allowing teams to stay ahead of trends.
Simpler Maintenance
Large monolithic frontends often create maintenance headaches, with developers hesitant to make changes due to the fear of unintended system-wide impacts. Micro-frontend architecture divides the codebase into manageable units with clearly defined dependencies, making maintenance tasks simpler and more accessible, even for new team members.
Autonomous Teams
Frontend development often faces obstacles due to a lack of synergy between designers and developers. Micro-frontend architecture fosters cross-functional teams that take ownership of end-to-end tasks for specific components. This leads to better communication, clearer focus, and the creation of optimized micro-frontends.
Independent Deployment
Independent deployment ensures the progressive evolution of any growing system. By using separate delivery pipelines for each micro frontend, teams can quickly implement improvements, resulting in a more efficient frontend that enhances the user experience.
Reusability
Micro-frontend architecture enables the reuse of common features, such as payment processing or chatbots, across different enterprise sites. This adaptability reduces the need to reinvent workflows for new sites, saving resources and increasing efficiency across projects.
How to Leverage Micro Frontend Architecture?
Utilizing Web Components
Web components serve as modular widgets that integrate into web pages, enabling the creation of reusable building blocks for web applications.
These components are fully functional across popular browsers such as Firefox, Opera, and Chrome. In cases where a browser doesn’t natively support web components, compatibility can be easily ensured by incorporating JavaScript Polyfills.
Web components consist of four key elements, each serving a distinct purpose. Let’s explore them in more detail:
- HTML Templates: HTML templates store hidden client-side content that remains inactive until triggered by JavaScript. While the browser validates the contents of the <template> tag during page load, the actual rendering occurs only when activated. Templates are particularly useful for dynamically populating lists and replicating content within the DOM multiple times, offering a flexible solution for reusing content efficiently.
- Shadow DOM: The Shadow DOM is an API that empowers developers to isolate and encapsulate CSS, JavaScript, and HTML within a web component, distinct from the primary document’s DOM. This separation ensures that end users cannot access the component’s internal structure. The Shadow DOM operates as a self-contained ecosystem, with limited interaction with external services and an unaffected internal operation, maintaining the integrity of the component’s DOM.
- HTML Imports: HTML imports define pre-built components that include their unique styles and scripts. Within the Document Object Model (DOM), the HTML import dictates the behavior of the component, while the imported document governs other aspects. HTML imports come with a “shell” component that acts as a top-level wrapper, offering a container to inject HTML code for nested applications.
Custom Elements
Custom elements allow developers to craft personalized HTML tags and apply unique CSS styles, offering unparalleled flexibility. These elements enable the creation of custom tags, the application of specific styles, and the execution of bespoke behaviors using scripts.
The lifecycle callbacks provided by web components and custom elements allow developers to define component-specific actions at different stages, including:
- CreatedCallback: Defines behavior when the component is initially registered.
- AttachedCallback: Specifies actions to take once the component is inserted into the DOM.
- DetachedCallback: Details actions that occur when an element is removed from the DOM.
- AttributeChangedCallback: Determines the response when attributes are added, modified, or removed.
Integrating Micro Frontend into the Browser
Web components provide a powerful method for assembling frontend fragments that can be integrated into new web applications. Additionally, these fragments can be bundled within microservices on the backend.
This approach enables frontend applications to manage routing decisions, select the appropriate components for display, and seamlessly coordinate interactions between different web components, offering a highly modular and efficient architecture for modern web applications.
Before diving into the process of creating micro frontends, it’s crucial to determine how to divide the frontend of your application. There are two primary ways to approach this division: horizontal split and vertical split.
The horizontal split involves breaking down the user interface into multiple segments, which can then be assigned to different teams. However, a major challenge here is ensuring that all components maintain a consistent, unified look and feel across the interface.
On the other hand, the vertical split focuses on business domains, with each domain being assigned to a different team. Since one team handles the full scope of the interface for a particular domain, they develop deeper expertise in that area, ultimately leading to a more cohesive and specialized understanding of the domain.
There are various strategies for implementing micro-frontend architecture, each influenced by how and where the different micro-frontend elements come together. The effectiveness of one method over another is often subjective and highly dependent on your specific use case. Let’s break down some of these strategies and explore which one might work best for your needs.
Server-Side Composition
In server-side composition, the different micro frontends are assembled at the server level before being sent to the browser. The server composes the final view, fetches the micro frontends, and arranges them into a complete page. This method has the advantage of loading core content on the server, which eliminates unnecessary loading time and avoids displaying blank screens for users. While the core content is visible, the rest of the micro applications load in the background.
A great example of this method is Facebook, which broke its rendering cycle into smaller, manageable chunks. By using this approach, Facebook was able to process and deliver individual “pagelets” to users while the remaining components continued processing in the background. Request parsing, data fetching, and markup generation were all handled on the server to optimize the user experience from the start.
Build-Time Integration
Another micro-frontend strategy involves organizing various micro-frontend codebases as independent repositories. This approach is attractive due to its simplicity in deployment, allowing for easier team management and ensuring UI consistency across the board. Additionally, data transfer to the browser can be optimized during the build phase, reducing inefficiencies.
However, a notable downside is that this method increases dependencies between the frontend elements, which can make it more difficult to keep release pipelines independent. This may lead to bottlenecks similar to those found in frontend monolithic architectures.
Despite these challenges, this strategy is still widely used in web applications. For example, DAZN, an OTT streaming service, favors build-time integration for its predictability and performance. They optimize this method by running comprehensive end-to-end tests before serving the application.
Run-Time Integration via Iframes
The client-side or run-time integration method involves delivering the micro frontends to the browser and then determining their placement and organization. One way to achieve this is by using iframes to integrate micro frontends. This technique preserves the principles of micro frontend architecture while being relatively simple to implement. It also helps isolate the parent application from the micro frontends, ensuring modularity.
However, the use of iframes can limit the user experience, as the content inside the iframe cannot exceed its boundaries. Additionally, integrating various application parts through iframes can make it more complex to build a responsive, fluid page.
Run-Time Integration via JavaScript
To address the limitations of iframes, JavaScript can be used for run-time integration. This approach offers greater flexibility in determining which micro frontends to include, when to load them, and where they should render within the page. It enables seamless interaction and dynamic control over the content, providing a better UX than iframe-based integration.
Run-Time Integration via Web Components
A slight variation of the previous method is run-time integration via web components, where micro frontends are implemented as web components. These web components can interact with URL routing and maintain the same benefits as JavaScript-based integration. This method enhances modularity and flexibility while maintaining separation between components.
When selecting the most suitable approach, consider your specific needs. For example, Vonage employs all three run-time integration techniques to ensure component isolation, remain agnostic to technology, and allow better communication between parts whenever necessary. This multi-strategy approach ensures flexibility and scalability, providing the best of all worlds.
How PureLogics Can Help You Overcome Micro Frontend Challenges
PureLogics is a trusted partner for companies worldwide, delivering outstanding digital products and experiences. Our team of skilled software engineers has a proven track record of successfully executing numerous micro frontend projects.
Leveraging our hands-on experience, we can anticipate challenges specific to your use case. We have not only tackled technical hurdles but have also guided our clients through organizational complexities when implementing micro frontends, and from the initial ideation phase to the final implementation, we provide support at every step, ensuring maximum efficiency and successful outcomes.
Reach out to us with your requirements, and let’s collaborate to devise a strategy that leads you to success.
