AWS Amplify

S3 as static hosting

Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched S3 in 2006, a cheap, scalable, high availability, and low latency object storage. It provides an option to host a static website but doesn’t offer a build pipeline.

Amplify

Amplify is a fully managed static hosting solution for modern Jamstack projects. It handles CI/CD and CDN.

There is no need to deal with IAM (which is a service to manage access to other AWS services). No need to configure CloudFront, S3, and CodePipeline. All you need is to connect the git repository and set the build command.

AWS Amplify Console

AWS Amplify Console looks like an Amazon version of Firebase, but instead of GCP, it uses the power of Amazon cloud. Cognito for authentication, AWS AppSync, and Amazon DynamoDB to power real-time database called DataStore.

Dashboard

Let me sum AWS UI and UX in one screenshot:

This is one of the first steps when you’re trying to deploy an example Gatsby app. Why dark or light mode if you can have both at once? But joking aside, AWS UI is bad. It has many glitches, it’s not very intuitive, and it’s hard to manage. Don’t get me wrong. AWS is a powerful cloud platform, it has dozens of different products, but it misses a good UX team.

Conclusion

AWS is famous for its complexity. Amplify tries to simplify the most common tasks and use cases. It is a step in the right direction. Amplify focuses on user experience and gives frontend developers one of the easiest ways to use and connect various AWS products.