Front-End Web & Mobile

Services for building and hosting web and mobile front ends, including APIs, hosting, and real-time data sync.

AWS Amplify

Fullstack platform for frontend and mobile developers to build, deploy, and host web and mobile apps without assembling AWS services by hand.

  • Two halves: Amplify Hosting (Git-based CI/CD + CDN hosting) and Amplify backend (auth, data, storage, functions defined in code)
  • Hosting supports static sites and SSR frameworks — React, Next.js, Vue, Angular, Nuxt — with atomic deploys and per-branch preview environments
  • Backend is a wrapper, not a new engine: auth = Cognito, API = AppSync/API Gateway, storage = S3, functions = Lambda underneath
  • Push to Git → Amplify builds and deploys automatically; every branch can be its own environment

Exam triggers

Phrases and scenarios that point here.

  • "Frontend or mobile developers with limited AWS experience" need to build a fullstack app fast
  • "Git-based workflow" or "CI/CD for a web app with the least operational overhead" → Amplify Hosting
  • "Quickly add authentication / API / storage to a web or mobile app" without managing individual services
  • Static or server-side rendered website with automatic deploys on every commit

Not this service

  • Full control over each pipeline stage → CodePipeline + CodeBuild
  • Static site where you want to own the CDN config → S3 + CloudFront
  • Testing apps on real physical phones → Device Farm
  • General-purpose infrastructure as code → CloudFormation or CDK

Use cases

  • A two-person startup ships a React app with login, a GraphQL API, and file uploads in a week — no one on the team has touched IAM policies directly
  • Marketing site where every Git branch gets its own preview URL, so designers review changes before merge instead of after deploy
  • Mobile app backend (auth + data sync + push-ready storage) stood up by the iOS developer, not a dedicated cloud team
  • Agency hosting a dozen client sites: push to main, Amplify builds and deploys each one — zero servers, zero pipelines to maintain
  • Next.js SSR app that needs a CDN, HTTPS, and custom domain out of the box without wiring CloudFront, ACM, and Route 53 manually

Commonly confused with

AWS Elastic BeanstalkComputeAWS CodePipelineDeveloper ToolsAmazon LightsailCompute

Full notes →

Verified against AWS documentation · 2026-08-28