> You can have a compose with multiple backend services and an nginx load balancer in it proxing back to it each one, then down/up each each backend service individually when upgrades for example..

Things are way simpler with Docker Swarm. You just run a single ingress controller as a separate stack and route all traffic internally.

If you use Traefik as your ingress controller, all you need to do is set labels in your docker compose files and everything just works.

There is absolutely no reason or excuse to use docker compose in anything resembling production.