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The S3 + CloudFront + Route 53 + ACM setup is powerful, but it's a lot of clicking for a simple front-end. AWS Amplify Hosting rolls all of that into one flow: connect your Git repo, and Amplify builds your app, serves it over HTTPS on a global CDN, and redeploys automatically every time you push. It's the "git push and it's live" experience, AWS-style.

What Amplify Hosting gives you in one box

   Git push ──► Amplify
                 ├─ pulls your code
                 ├─ runs your build (npm run build, etc.)
                 ├─ deploys to a global CDN (CloudFront under the hood)
                 ├─ serves over HTTPS (certificate handled for you)
                 └─ gives you a live URL
   Next push ──► it all happens again, automatically

Everything you'd assemble by hand - build, storage, CDN, TLS certificate, deploy pipeline - Amplify wires together and manages.

Under the hood Amplify is using S3, CloudFront, and ACM. The value isn't new infrastructure - it's that you stop assembling those pieces yourself. Amplify trades some control for a huge reduction in setup. Think of it as the PaaS option for front-ends, where S3-static-hosting is the IaaS-flavoured, do-it-yourself option.

What it's good at

Amplify Hosting is built for front-end and JavaScript-framework apps:

Great fit	Examples
Single-page apps	React, Vue, Angular
Static site generators	Next.js (static/SSR), Gatsby, Hugo, Astro
Plain static sites	HTML/CSS/JS with a build step

It handles SPA routing (so refreshing /about doesn't 404), build environments per branch, and more.

Deploying - the Git-connected flow

Push your app to a Git provider

GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or AWS CodeCommit. Amplify connects to the repo.

Create an Amplify app and connect the repo

Amplify console → New app → Host web app. Authorize your Git provider and pick the repository and branch (e.g. main).

Confirm the build settings

Amplify auto-detects most frameworks and proposes a build spec - the install, build, and output-directory commands. Adjust if needed:

amplify.yml

version: 1
frontend:
  phases:
    preBuild:
      commands:
        - npm ci
    build:
      commands:
        - npm run build
  artifacts:
    baseDirectory: build      # or dist / out, per your framework
    files:
      - '**/*'

Deploy

Amplify runs the build and deploys. In a couple of minutes you get a live HTTPS URL like https://main.d1abc234.amplifyapp.com.

Push to redeploy

From now on, every git push to the connected branch triggers an automatic rebuild and deploy. No manual upload, no cache invalidation to remember.

The features you get for free

Things you'd otherwise wire up yourself:

Continuous deployment - push to deploy, every time.
HTTPS by default - certificate provisioned and renewed automatically.
Global CDN - fast worldwide via CloudFront edges.
Branch deployments - connect a dev branch and get a separate preview URL; great for testing before merging.
Custom domains - connect your own domain with managed TLS in a few clicks.
Atomic deploys & rollbacks - a bad build doesn't half-replace the site; you can roll back to a previous deploy.

Amplify Hosting is for front-ends and static/SSR sites, not arbitrary back-end servers. If you need a long-running Java/Spring backend, a database, or container workloads, that's Elastic Beanstalk or ECS (later sections) - not Amplify Hosting. (The broader Amplify platform also offers backend features like auth and APIs, but the Hosting piece we're using here is about shipping the front-end.)

S3 hosting vs. Amplify - which to pick

Both serve static sites well. Choose by how much you want managed for you:

	S3 (+ CloudFront)	Amplify Hosting
Setup	You assemble the pieces	One connected flow
CI/CD	You build it (or CodePipeline)	Built in - push to deploy
HTTPS / domain	You configure ACM + Route 53	Handled for you
Control	Maximum	Less, but far less work
Best for	Learning the internals; bespoke setups	Shipping a front-end fast

A good rule: use S3 + CloudFront when you want to understand and control every layer (and this course deliberately does that on the previous page), and use Amplify when you just want a front-end live with CI/CD and HTTPS in five minutes. Knowing both means you can pick the right trade-off per project instead of forcing one tool everywhere.

That wraps storage and static hosting. Next we let AWS run a database for us - Amazon RDS.

Deploy a Static Site with Amplify