What is AWS Amplify?

Nowadays, most businesses are transitioning to a cloud-based model and are ready to cut the cord. Leading the Cloud - The Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform is a leader in the various cloud adoption services.

Amazon's ever-growing portfolio offers a total of over 90 services and products to meet the needs of developers to develop fast, efficient, serverless, and secure web and mobile applications.

One such service that is gaining momentum and has greatly simplified and accelerated the developers' tasks is known as AWS Amplify. This article will allow a deeper dive into everything related to AWS Amplify - from how it works to its features, integrations, pricing model, upsides, and downsides.

A complete guide to AWS Amplify

AWS is a full-suite platform developed to assist web and mobile developers in building full-stack and scalable applications powered by AWS. The platform comes with several tools and services that allow users to configure backends, connect apps, quickly deploy static web apps, and seamlessly manage content external to the AWS console.

AWS Amplify was launched in 2017 and is a full-suite package of tools and services specifically designed to help developers easily build and launch apps. The most important advantage of this tool is that it allows you to quickly and securely integrate myriad functions for everything from APIs to AI. It may also include code libraries, ready-to-use components, and built-in CLIs.

Another reason behind the launch of AWS Amplify is the user experience. User experience is the most integral component of any application that should be taken care of. AWS Amplify was built to integrate UX across multiple platforms, including web and mobile.

It gives users the flexibility to select the most comfortable building platform and is especially beneficial for frontend development. Most Amplify users also claim that it makes full-stack development more comfortable with its scalability factor.

Now, let us peek into how AWS Amplify works.

How does AWS Amplify work?

You can think of AWS Amplify as a JavaScript library that lets you build and deploy serverless applications in the cloud. It is a full-stack application platform that combines both client-side and server-side code. In a nutshell, AWS Amplify consists of three major components:

• Libraries
• UI
• CLI Toolchain.

All these components work collaboratively to manage the application development lifecycle. Here's a brief look at each element:

Libraries: This component lets you connect, integrate, and interact with AWS cloud services. The library makes it easy to add secure authentication, file storage, data storage, serverless APIs, analytics, push notifications, AR/VR, and many more features to your apps.

UI: These are pre-built UI components designed around the cloud workflows in your application, including the authentication higher-order component.

CLI Toolchain: This last component helps you scale your application. If you ever need to add more cloud services and features, easy-to-use CLI commands can efficiently make changes to your AWS-managed backend.

Advantages of Using AWS Amplify

• Easy and UI Driven Development
  AWS Amplify provides a simple, fast, and modern UI-driven approach to building mobile and web applications. The out-of-the-box UI component provides everything, so you don't have to code one. The design of CLI processes and workflows is also seamless, which speeds up app development.
• Usage-based payments
  Like many other paid AWS services, the payment model for AWS Amplify is very flexible and cost-effective as you only pay for the services you use.
• Backend Support
  AWS Amplify improves app performance by offering built-in support for the backend management.
• It's free to get started
  Several free and impressive tiers with AWS Amplify offer many benefits and zero cost. When you reach a higher threshold of technical requirements, you'll need to set up a paid tier.
• Web-Based Analytics
  AWS Amplify comes with a web-based analytics dashboard that is extremely useful for developers, designers, and project managers. It not only tracks user sessions and attributes but also provides in-app metrics. Analytics is always up to date, allowing teams to manage and track projects.

AWS Amplify Limitations

• Higher Education Curve
  If you are an AWS Amplify newbie, you can feel that the time you save in writing code will be used in learning the platform. Sometimes, it is difficult for beginners to find the right method in the documentation, and the multiple methods and versions sometimes make it difficult to navigate.
• Constant Change
  It is a constantly changing platform, and thus new changes and features are rolled out constantly. It means that an AWS Amplify user must always be on top to keep them up to date and continue exploring the platform.
• Cost
  Since AWS Amplify is a managed service, the end-user has less control over the environment and installed packages that can affect your website and most likely cost more than the backend can handle. It would be best to deal with the other pitfalls of managed services.
• Traffic Distribution
  You cannot use load balancers to distribute traffic when using AWS Amplify. It can be a major drawback in some cases, such as handling traffic spikes and latency issues.

How does Amplify integrate with other AWS Services?

AWS Amplify provides user interface elements for cloud-connected workflows, CLI toolchains, and code libraries. To integrate with other AWS services, these libraries can be deployed interchangeably or independently without adjusting the UI of the existing app. In simple words, with Amplify, it can be done by adding a few code lines to the existing frontend app.

There are a few approaches when assembling a real frontend application with AWS Amplify, such as performing a full backend rebuild which can be done using the Amplify toolchain to rebuild resources.

The Top Features of AWS Amplify

AWS Amplify provides the ability to build various apps like iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, React, and Vue that can easily communicate with AWS services through the AWS Amplify framework. Let us examine the most popular web hosting features that AWS Amplify currently offers:

• Authentication
  With AWS Amplify creating a fully managed user directory and onboarding flow with pre-built sign-up, sign-in forgot password, and multi-factor authorization workflows are straightforward. It also supports logging in via social media tools like Facebook, Google+, or logging in with Amazon. Amazon Cognito also powers enhanced access control for mobile and web applications.
• Securely store and sync data
  AWS Amplify lets you securely sync and store data between applications with Amazon AppSync and Amazon S3. It also allows easy offline synchronization.
• Quick Backend Updates
  Due to the serverless nature of AWS Amplify, it is very easy to make changes to backend-related tasks. It saves the earlier time spent configuring and maintaining the backend features.
• Data store
  AWS also provides Amplify datastore capability, providing a programming model to leverage shared and distributed data without writing additional code for offline and online use cases. The result is distributed and cross-user data, which is as easy as working with local-only data.
• Deployment and App Development
  AWS Amplify promotes rapid app development and is very useful for continuous deployment.
• Machine Learning and AI Requirements
  AWS Amplify is very useful in implementing requirements related to Machine Learning and AI as it is powered by Amazon Machine Learning services like Amazon SageMaker. You can easily create use cases like text translation, text-to-speech generation, interpretation, and transcribing. It also enables simplified orchestration of advanced use cases like uploading images for automated training etc.
• Analytics
  AWS Amplify can be used to achieve auto-tracking, which can track user sessions and web page metrics for analytics. You can retrieve real-time data streams and analyze data to build robust marketing strategies to increase customer adoption, engagement, and retention rates. This capability is driven into Amplify through Amazon Pinpoint and Amazon Kinesis.
• Conversation
  With just one line of code, AWS Amplify lets you build interactive and engaging interactive bots with the same deep learning technologies that run Amazon Alexa. When tasks like automated customer chat support and product information and recommendations need to be performed, great user experiences can be created through chatbots.
• PubSub
  Messaging between your app instance and the backend is now possible with AWS Amplify, which gives you the ability to create real-time interactive experiences.
• Sending Notifications
  Marketing and analytics capabilities are built-in to AWS Amplify to let you target customers more effectively. It is now possible to build your content and communicate through multiple channels such as email, text, and push notifications, and it operates through Amazon Pinpoint.
• Storage
  It's now possible thanks to Amplify to securely store and manage user-generated content, including photos and videos, on your device or in the cloud. It provides a simple mechanism for managing user content in three types of storage buckets: public, protected, or private.

AWS Amplify Pricing

AWS Amplify comes with the following price structure:

• Free Tier: This is one of the first payment methods, which can also be called the trial period of 12 months.
• Pay As you Go Model: After the first 12 months, the free tier is converted to a pay-as-you-go model, which means you start paying for whatever you use.

Here is a pricing breakdown of all the services included in the pay as you go model:

The components and libraries of the framework are independent. The good thing is that payment is only required for your services to develop and deploy your app. For example, if S3 is your storage model for Amplify, you'll only pay for the regular S3 charges and nothing else.

For app development, deployment, and hosting, the AWS Amplify free tier comes in handy and can be used for up to 12 months with some restrictions. Afterward, you'll have to pay $0.01 per minute to build, $0.023 per GB of storage monthly, and for every GB used, the cost comes down to just $0.15.

AWS Amplify includes a variety of open-source libraries and drag-and-drop UI components that developers can use as building blocks for their apps. It also has a built-in CLI that you can use to build your backend. And for an additional fee, AWS Amplify Console provides web hosting services for your apps.

AWS Amplify Alternatives

Here we have the top 3 options for you to know:

Back4app

Back4app is one of the most exciting and best free mobile and web application development platforms you can ever have. This backend as a service solution brings an impressive range of built-in features ranging from REST and GraphQL APIs, email notifications, geo queries, cross-platform SDKs, real-time databases, and much more.\

Backendless

Backend is one of the best backends as a service platform less, making the application development process super-fast and simpler. It comes with many useful features, including user authentication, advanced security features, real-time database to reallocation, caching, logging, and easy user management.

Firebase

Firebase is one of the foremost application development platforms and has been supported by Google since 2014. The feature range of Google Firebase includes anything from file storage, APIs to cloud hosting, smart analytics, real-time databases, etc.

What's included in AWS Amplify?

AWS Amplify includes a variety of open-source libraries and drag-and-drop UI components that developers can use as building blocks for their apps. It also has a built-in CLI that you can use to build your backend. And for an additional fee, AWS Amplify Console provides web hosting services for your apps.

AWS Amplify has components for:

• Data storage
  • Keep your app data synced with the cloud, manage your distributed data, and handle subscriptions and messaging.
• Analytics
  • Track user sessions and report on their behavior. Set up custom attributes and analyze conversion funnels.
• Push notifications
  • Easily manage your campaigns and send messages to your users across multiple channels, including text, email, and push.
• Authentication
  • Access ready-to-use workflows for MFA, single sign-on, forgot password, etc.

FAQs

What is AWS Amplify compatible with?

The framework supports iOS, Android, Web, and React Native mobile apps, and React, Ionic, Angular, and vue.js for web apps.

How much does AWS Amplify cost?

The amplification framework of libraries, components, etc., is free! You only need to pay for the services you are using to build/deploy your App; For example, if you're using an S3 for storage and adding an Amplify storage module, you'll pay the normal S3 fee.

For build/deployment and web hosting, an AWS Amplify free tier applies for 12 months (with some limitations). After that, for build/deployment, it's $0.01 per build minute, $0.023 per GB of storage per month, and $0.15 for each GB of service.

Who should use AWS Amplify?

AWS Amplify is great for people who want to build their backend or other components from scratch. The Amplify components themselves make it easy to set up your app's building blocks without having to do all the legwork.

What companies have used AWS Amplify?

The public customer list for AWS Amplify isn't very strong yet. However, they have some heavy hitters, like millennial-favorite fitness app Noom and location tracking cloud service HyperTrack.