AWS
Amazon's cloud platform — storage, compute, and everything in between.
AWS (Amazon Web Services) is Amazon's cloud computing platform — a collection of over 200 services covering servers, databases, file storage, networking, security, AI, and more. It's what powers a significant portion of the internet: Netflix, Airbnb, NASA, the CIA, and millions of other services run on AWS.
We use specific AWS services for specific needs rather than the full platform: S3 for file and media storage, EC2 for scalable server compute, RDS for managed databases, CloudFront for content delivery, and SES for transactional email.
For most projects, simpler infrastructure (a managed server on DigitalOcean or Hetzner) is faster to deploy and cheaper to run. We reach for AWS when a project needs the scale, the global footprint, or the specific services that only AWS provides.
S3 (Simple Storage Service) stores files — user uploads, generated documents, images, backups — at virtually unlimited scale. Files are served directly to users without touching your application server.
EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) provides virtual servers that can be resized or multiplied as traffic grows — without migrating infrastructure.
RDS (Relational Database Service) runs MySQL or PostgreSQL with automated backups, failover, and scaling handled by AWS, not your team.
CloudFront caches your assets at edge locations around the world, serving them from the location closest to each user for the fastest possible load times.