Top 10 AWS Services for Startups (2019 Edition)

Building a secure, stable, and cost-effective application for your startup is never an easy task. Luckily, Amazon Web Services, or AWS, can do some of the work for you. AWS provides a massive portfolio of services for developing and implementing any cloud application. However, with 90+ options, choosing the right services for your startup can be daunting. But don’t worry! Here are the top 10 services most useful for your startup’s cloud application.

If your company has been established for a while, check out our AWS list for enterprises.

1. Amazon EC2

Physical servers are never cheap, but thanks to Amazon EC2, you can quickly create your own virtual servers to save both time and money. EC2 provides developers with the tools to set up virtual machines with useful features to manage security, storage, and ports. Gone are the days of expensive and time-consuming server maintenance. Instead, you can focus on your own core projects.

2. Amazon S3

Using the cloud does not have to be scary because with Amazon S3, or Amazon Simple Storage Service, you can rest easy that your valuable data is safe. S3 offers incredibly secure triple-redundant storage, meaning that your data is held in three different physical locations. In addition to this remarkably secure infrastructure, integrations such as HIPAA/HITECH and FedRAMP keep your data protected from compromise. Even better, none of these critical security measures sacrifice speed. Using Amazon’s web service interface, you can easily access all your data with a single click and almost zero latency.Best of all, this incredible service is shockingly cheap. Amazon offers a free layer with 5 GB of storage, then starts at $0.023 per month for the first 50TB without any minimum fee.

3. Amazon RDS

When working with databases, tasks like updates, patches, and backups consume too much valuable time. For startups that want stress-free and simple database maintenance, Amazon Relational Database Service, or Amazon RDS is a wise choice. In mere minutes, your startup can set up several instances with the capacity to support SQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and other familiar engines. While you focus on more important work, the AWS Support team provides full support and manages all the tedious maintenance tasks. Cloud databases have never been this simple!

4. Amazon VPC

Any startup concerned about security should consider Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, or VPC, to protect its information. VPC allows your startup to easily house its entire IT infrastructure in a private cloud network that is completely isolated from the outside world. That way, only people and systems you authorize can access your company’s vital information.

5. Amazon CloudFront

Are you concerned about performance? Amazon CloudFront boosts your speed by managing all your content and sending it to users quickly and effectively. CloudFront offers fast and secure data, app and API delivery so users can see static website files from data centers around the world. This developer-friendly environment enables you to reach your target user with lightning speed.CloudFront is not only fast but also easy to use. The Content Delivery Network, or CDN, is ready in minutes and integrates seamlessly with other AWS services. Besides, Amazon offers a pay-as-you-go price with no upfront fee, so you can rest assured that your customers receive the optimal experience on your website.

6. Amazon SNS

Most startups‒especially ones working with mobile applications‒want to send users emails and notifications, but durability and security are not easy to guarantee. Amazon Simple Notification Service, or SNS, makes this vital communication simple for developers by offering many-to-many endpoint messaging as a service. It allows your startup to send high-throughput SMS, email, and SQS or Html notifications to users on any platform ranging from web to Android or iOS. SNS provides flexible integration with any application running on PHP, NodeJS, Python, and more, enabling your startup to send push notifications to all your users with ease.

7. AWS Elasticache

Speed is critical, so any website that serves static data must have a good caching layer, like Amazon Elasticache. With Elasticache, you can quickly retrieve data from a reliable in-memory system instead of a painfully-slow disk-based database. Elasticache provides fully-managed Memcache or Redis, allowing you to say goodbye to bad performance. These features reduce latency for applications with read-heavy and compute-intensive workloads, making the service especially popular for startups developing Gaming, Ad-Tech, Healthcare, and IoT applications.

8. Amazon Auto Scaling

A startup’s number one goal is to grow, and Amazon Auto Scaling enables your application to expand with you. While you focus on reaching thousands or even millions of new users, Amazon focuses on managing a fleet of servers so that your application can handle any amount of traffic while automatically adjusting memory to maintain steady performance at the lowest possible cost. Best of all, the service is free! You will only pay for the Amazon CloudWatch monitoring fees and the resources needed to run your applications.

9. AWS Lambda

Is EC2 not right for you? With Lambda, you can run your code and pay as you go without managing any servers. All you have to do is upload your code and AWS will be responsible for providing the necessary resources. You only pay for the compute time you use–when your code is not running, you don’t have to pay. As a result, Lambda is especially useful if your startup is overwhelmed with requests that your infrastructure cannot support.

10. Elastic Beanstalk

The last thing a fast-paced startup wants to worry about is tedious and time-consuming infrastructure maintenance. If your services use EC2 computing and S3 storage, Amazon Elastic Beanstalk manages infrastructure for you by balancing loads across multiple data centers and automatically starting new EC2 instances when your application is overloaded. And did we mention that Beanstalk itself is free?

Bonus: AWS AppSync

AppSync is an incredibly useful service that gives you access to a fully-managed GraphQL API, which allows you to combine data from web and mobile applications. It also allows users to update data offline. This service is especially beneficial to startups building scalable applications that require real-time updates from several sources.

Certified AWS Partner

Fyresite is a Certified Partner of Amazon Web Services offering development, migration, and maintenance on AWS infrastructure. If you need any help moving your software infrastructure to AWS, please drop us a line through our contact form or call us at 888.221.6509.