AWS Amplify
AWS Amplify is a full-stack development platform from Amazon Web Services that combines Git-based hosting with continuous deployment for front-end web and mobile apps and TypeScript-based provisioning of backend resources such as authentication, data, and storage.
Key points
- Amplify Hosting provides a Git-based workflow with managed CI/CD: connecting a branch in GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, or — for existing customers only, since CodeCommit stopped onboarding new customers in July 2024 — AWS CodeCommit, triggers a build and deploy to AWS’s global CDN via Amazon CloudFront.
- Supports server-side-rendered frameworks (Next.js, Nuxt, and others via custom adapters), single-page app frameworks (React, Angular, Vue.js, Ionic, Ember), and static site generators.
- Hosting features include per-branch environments, custom domains, pull-request previews, password-protected branches, redirects/rewrites, and atomic deployments that update the app only once a full deployment completes.
- Gen 2 is now simply the default Amplify experience — a code-first, TypeScript backend-definition experience with per-developer sandbox environments. It replaced the earlier CLI/Amplify Studio workflow (retroactively called “Gen 1”), which is no longer the primary path for new projects.
- Backend building blocks cover Auth (sign-up/sign-in flows built on Amazon Cognito), Data (real-time, secure APIs backed by AWS databases, comparable to what AWS AppSync and Amazon API Gateway provide directly), Storage, and Functions for serverless logic.
- Abstracts the underlying AWS services so developers describe requirements in TypeScript rather than provisioning Cognito, AppSync, or API Gateway resources by hand.
- Charges only for what is used, with no separate charge for the hosting/CI-CD tooling itself beyond the underlying build, hosting, and backend resource usage.