On this page
- AWS Services List
- Compute Services
- Storage Services
- Database Services
- Networking & Content Delivery
- Security & Identity
- Monitoring & Observability
- Developer Tools & DevOps
- Containers
- Serverless Services
- Application Integration & Messaging
- AI & Machine Learning
- Analytics & Big Data
- Data Transfer & Migration
- IoT Services
- Developer & API Services
- Media Services
- Business Applications
- Cost Management
- Which AWS Services Does a Typical SaaS Product Need?
- AWS Architecture Should Follow the Product
- AWS Services for Different Types of Products
- Don’t Use Every AWS Service
- How Ethereal Softech Can Help
- Conclusion
AWS Services List
Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides hundreds of cloud services for building, deploying, securing, scaling and managing modern applications.
Instead of treating AWS as simply a collection of cloud servers, businesses can use AWS for almost every layer of a technology platform from application hosting and databases to AI, analytics, cybersecurity, networking and DevOps.
Below is a practical AWS services list organized by what businesses actually use them for.
Compute Services
Compute services provide the infrastructure required to run applications and workloads.
Amazon EC2 — Virtual servers for running applications and backend workloads.
AWS Lambda — Serverless compute that runs code in response to events without managing servers.
Amazon ECS — Container orchestration service for running Docker containers.
Amazon EKS — Managed Kubernetes service.
AWS Fargate — Serverless compute for containers.
AWS Batch — Runs batch computing workloads.
Amazon Lightsail — Simplified cloud infrastructure for smaller applications and websites.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk — Deploy and manage applications without manually managing much of the underlying infrastructure.
AWS App Runner — Deploy containerized web applications and APIs with managed infrastructure.
AWS Outposts — AWS infrastructure deployed in a customer’s own data center or on-premises environment.
Storage Services
AWS provides several storage options depending on whether you need object, block or file storage.
Amazon S3 — Object storage for images, videos, documents, backups, static websites and application files.
Amazon S3 Glacier — Low-cost archival storage.
Amazon EBS — Persistent block storage for EC2.
Amazon EFS — Managed elastic file storage.
Amazon FSx — Managed file systems for specialized workloads.
AWS Storage Gateway — Connects on-premises environments with AWS storage.
AWS Backup — Centralized backup management across supported AWS services.
Database Services
AWS offers relational, NoSQL, in-memory and specialized databases.
Amazon RDS — Managed relational databases including PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle and SQL Server.
Amazon Aurora — AWS-developed relational database compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Amazon DynamoDB — Serverless NoSQL database designed for high-scale applications.
Amazon ElastiCache — Managed in-memory caching using supported engines such as Valkey and Memcached.
Amazon MemoryDB — Durable in-memory database designed for applications requiring very fast data access.
Amazon Neptune — Graph database service.
Amazon DocumentDB — Managed document database compatible with MongoDB workloads.
Amazon Redshift — Cloud data warehouse for analytics.
Amazon Timestream — Time-series database for workloads such as IoT and operational monitoring.
Networking & Content Delivery
Networking is the foundation of a production AWS architecture.
Amazon VPC — Creates an isolated virtual network for AWS resources.
Amazon Route 53 — DNS and domain management service.
Amazon CloudFront — Content delivery network (CDN).
Elastic Load Balancing — Distributes traffic across application resources.
Application Load Balancer (ALB) — Layer 7 load balancing for HTTP/HTTPS applications.
Network Load Balancer (NLB) — High-performance Layer 4 load balancing.
AWS Transit Gateway — Connects multiple VPCs and networks.
AWS Direct Connect — Dedicated network connection between an organization and AWS.
AWS PrivateLink — Private connectivity to supported services and applications.
AWS Global Accelerator — Improves global application availability and performance.
Security & Identity
Security should be designed into the architecture rather than added after deployment.
AWS IAM — Identity and access management.
AWS IAM Identity Center — Centralized workforce access management.
Amazon Cognito — User authentication and authorization for applications.
AWS KMS — Encryption key management.
AWS Secrets Manager — Securely stores and manages secrets such as API keys and database credentials.
AWS Certificate Manager — Manages SSL/TLS certificates.
AWS WAF — Web application firewall.
AWS Shield — DDoS protection.
Amazon GuardDuty — Threat detection.
Amazon Inspector — Vulnerability management and security assessment.
AWS Security Hub — Centralized security findings and security posture management.
Amazon Macie — Helps discover and protect sensitive data stored in Amazon S3.
Monitoring & Observability
Production applications need continuous monitoring.
Amazon CloudWatch — Metrics, logs, alarms and application monitoring.
AWS CloudTrail — Records AWS API activity for auditing and governance.
AWS X-Ray — Distributed tracing for applications.
Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus — Managed Prometheus-compatible monitoring.
Amazon Managed Grafana — Managed visualization and observability dashboards.
These services can help engineering teams identify:
Performance issues, infrastructure failures, application errors, unusual traffic, resource bottlenecks and security events.
Developer Tools & DevOps
AWS provides services for automating development and deployment.
AWS CodeBuild — Managed build service.
AWS CodeDeploy — Automates application deployments.
AWS CodePipeline — CI/CD pipeline orchestration.
AWS CodeArtifact — Managed package repository.
AWS CodeConnections — Connects AWS developer tools with supported source-code providers.
AWS CloudFormation — Infrastructure as code.
AWS CDK — Define AWS infrastructure using programming languages.
AWS Systems Manager — Operational management of AWS and hybrid infrastructure.
AWS Proton — Infrastructure and deployment tooling for platform teams.
Containers
For modern cloud-native applications, containers are increasingly common.
Amazon ECS — Managed container orchestration.
Amazon EKS — Managed Kubernetes.
Amazon ECR — Container image registry.
AWS Fargate — Serverless compute for containers.
A typical architecture could look like:
Developer → Git → CI/CD → ECR → ECS/EKS → Load Balancer → Users
Serverless Services
Serverless architecture allows businesses to build applications without directly managing traditional servers.
Important services include:
AWS Lambda
Amazon API Gateway
Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon EventBridge
AWS Step Functions
Amazon SQS
Amazon SNS
Amazon Cognito
A serverless application might therefore look like:
Mobile App → API Gateway → Lambda → DynamoDB
This can be particularly useful for startups and applications with unpredictable traffic.
Application Integration & Messaging
Modern applications often contain many independent systems.
AWS provides services for connecting them.
Amazon SQS — Message queue.
Amazon SNS — Pub/sub messaging and notifications.
Amazon EventBridge — Event bus for event-driven architectures.
AWS Step Functions — Workflow orchestration.
Amazon MQ — Managed message brokers.
AWS AppSync — Managed API service for applications using GraphQL.
These services are particularly useful when building distributed systems, microservices and event-driven applications.
AI & Machine Learning
AWS has a large collection of AI and machine-learning services.
Amazon Bedrock — Build generative AI applications using foundation models through managed APIs.
Amazon SageMaker AI — Build, train and deploy machine-learning models.
Amazon Rekognition — Image and video analysis.
Amazon Textract — Extract text and structured information from documents.
Amazon Comprehend — Natural-language processing.
Amazon Transcribe — Speech-to-text.
Amazon Translate — Machine translation.
Amazon Polly — Text-to-speech.
Amazon Lex — Build conversational interfaces.
Amazon Personalize — Personalized recommendations.
Amazon Forecast — Forecasting workloads.
For an AI product, AWS can therefore provide infrastructure from:
Data → Processing → Model → API → Application
Analytics & Big Data
AWS provides services for processing and analysing large datasets.
Amazon Athena — Query data in S3 using SQL.
Amazon Redshift — Data warehouse.
Amazon EMR — Big-data processing.
Amazon Kinesis — Real-time data streaming.
AWS Glue — Data integration and ETL.
Amazon OpenSearch Service — Search and analytics.
Amazon QuickSight — Business intelligence and visualization.
Amazon Data Firehose — Deliver streaming data to supported destinations.
Data Transfer & Migration
Businesses moving existing systems to AWS can use:
AWS Migration Hub — Centralized migration tracking.
AWS Application Migration Service — Helps migrate applications to AWS.
AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) — Migrates databases.
AWS DataSync — Data transfer between storage systems and AWS.
AWS Transfer Family — Managed file-transfer services.
AWS Snow Family — Physical devices and services for transferring large datasets and supporting edge workloads.
IoT Services
AWS also provides infrastructure for connected devices.
AWS IoT Core — Connect devices to AWS.
AWS IoT Device Management — Manage connected devices.
AWS IoT Device Defender — Security for IoT deployments.
AWS IoT SiteWise — Collect and analyse industrial equipment data.
AWS IoT Greengrass — Run AWS IoT capabilities at the edge.
Developer & API Services
Application developers commonly use:
Amazon API Gateway — Create and manage APIs.
AWS AppSync — GraphQL APIs and real-time data.
Amazon Cognito — Authentication.
AWS Lambda — Backend functions.
Amazon Location Service — Maps, location and geospatial capabilities.
These services can form the backend of mobile applications, SaaS platforms and web applications.
Media Services
AWS also has services for video and audio workloads.
Amazon IVS — Managed live-video streaming.
AWS Elemental MediaLive — Live video processing.
AWS Elemental MediaConvert — File-based video transcoding.
AWS Elemental MediaPackage — Video origination and packaging.
Amazon Kinesis Video Streams — Stream video from connected devices.
These can be relevant for:
Live streaming apps, OTT platforms, sports platforms, social media applications, video conferencing and video-on-demand systems.
Business Applications
AWS also provides cloud-based business applications and services.
Examples include:
Amazon Connect — Cloud contact center.
Amazon SES — Email sending service.
Amazon Pinpoint — Customer engagement and messaging capabilities.
Amazon WorkMail — Managed business email and calendaring.
Cost Management
Cloud cost management becomes increasingly important as infrastructure grows.
Important services include:
AWS Cost Explorer — Analyse AWS spending.
AWS Budgets — Create cost and usage budgets.
AWS Billing Conductor — Custom billing views and allocation.
AWS Cost and Usage Reports — Detailed usage and billing data.
For growing SaaS companies, AWS architecture should be designed with cost visibility from the beginning.
Which AWS Services Does a Typical SaaS Product Need?
A SaaS application doesn’t need hundreds of AWS services.
A practical architecture could use:
Route 53 for DNS
CloudFront for CDN
AWS WAF for web protection
ALB for traffic distribution
ECS/Fargate or EC2 for application workloads
RDS PostgreSQL for relational data
ElastiCache for caching
S3 for files
Lambda for event-driven jobs
SQS for asynchronous processing
CloudWatch for monitoring
IAM + KMS + Secrets Manager for security
CloudFormation/CDK for infrastructure automation
That’s already enough to build a serious production platform.
AWS Architecture Should Follow the Product
One of the biggest mistakes companies make is selecting AWS services first and designing the product around them.
The better approach is:
- Business Requirements
- Product Architecture
- Traffic & Data Requirements
- Security Requirements
- AWS Service Selection
- Infrastructure Automation
- Monitoring & Cost Optimization
For example, an appointment-booking SaaS might need a very different architecture from a video-streaming platform.
A fintech platform will have different security and compliance requirements from an e-commerce store.
An AI document-processing platform will have completely different compute and storage requirements from a social networking application.
AWS Services for Different Types of Products
| Product | Common AWS Services |
|---|---|
| SaaS | EC2/ECS, RDS, S3, CloudFront, Cognito, CloudWatch |
| E-commerce | ECS/EC2, RDS, ElastiCache, S3, CloudFront, WAF |
| Mobile App | API Gateway, Lambda/ECS, RDS/DynamoDB, Cognito, S3 |
| AI Application | Bedrock, SageMaker AI, S3, Lambda/ECS |
| Video Platform | S3, CloudFront, MediaConvert, IVS/MediaLive |
| Fintech | VPC, ECS/EC2, RDS, KMS, WAF, CloudTrail, CloudWatch |
| IoT | IoT Core, IoT Greengrass, Kinesis, S3, Lambda |
| Data Platform | S3, Glue, Athena, Redshift, Kinesis |
| Enterprise Application | VPC, ECS/EKS, RDS, IAM, KMS, CloudWatch |
Don’t Use Every AWS Service
A bigger AWS architecture is not automatically a better architecture.
For a startup, using:
EKS + ECS + Lambda + multiple databases + Kafka + several queues + multiple caches
without a real requirement can create unnecessary complexity.
The objective should be:
Use the simplest AWS architecture that can reliably support the current business requirements while leaving a clear path for future scale.
Start simple.
Measure.
Identify bottlenecks.
Then introduce additional AWS services where they solve a real problem.
How Ethereal Softech Can Help
Choosing AWS services is only one part of cloud development.
Ethereal Softech can help businesses with:
AWS Cloud Architecture
Cloud-Native Application Development
AWS Migration
SaaS Development
Mobile Backend Development
Serverless Development
AWS DevOps & CI/CD
Cloud Infrastructure Audits
AWS Cost Optimization
AI/ML Cloud Infrastructure
Scalable API Development
Database Architecture
Security & Monitoring
The objective isn’t to put your application on as many AWS services as possible.
It is to design an architecture that balances:
Performance + Security + Scalability + Reliability + Development Speed + Cost.
Conclusion
AWS is not one technology.
It is an enormous cloud ecosystem covering compute, storage, databases, networking, security, AI, analytics, containers, serverless, DevOps, media, IoT and much more.
The right AWS architecture depends on what you’re building, how many users you expect, how much data you process, where your customers are located, your security requirements and how much operational complexity your team can manage.
The best AWS architecture is not the one with the most services. It’s the one that solves the business problem with the right level of complexity.
If you’re planning a new SaaS platform, mobile application, e-commerce system, AI product, fintech platform or enterprise application, Ethereal Softech can help you design the AWS architecture before development begins and identify opportunities to control infrastructure costs as the product scales.