SOA is less obvious up front, as most good architecture tends to be, but the benefits are there over time for sure. Also, SOA is not always brilliant on day on

SOA is less obvious up front, as most good architecture tends to be, but the benefits are there over time for sure. Also, SOA is not always brilliant on day one, but you can give your small app a head start by writing a web api first, then build your app on top of it by making HTTP requests to itself basically or by writing your app as a service layer but not as a separate set of HTTP calls. The point is you don't have to have a monolithic architecture to start with SOA, you can use a simple RPC or RESTful pattern and evolve it over time as your needs grow.