20 AWS Services Every Developer Should Know
Amazon Web Services has transformed from a handful of services to a sprawling ecosystem of over 200 cloud services. For developers navigating this vast landscape, knowing which services are truly essential can mean the difference between building efficient, scalable applications and getting lost in complexity.
Whether you're developing fintech applications requiring robust security, healthcare platforms demanding HIPAA compliance, or e-commerce systems needing elastic scalability, mastering these 20 core AWS services will accelerate your development velocity and reduce infrastructure headaches.
This guide breaks down the essential AWS services across compute, storage, databases, networking, security, and developer tools—with practical insights on when and how to use each service effectively.
Compute Services: Running Your Applications
1. Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)
What It Is: Virtual servers in the cloud that provide resizable compute capacity.
Why Developers Need It: EC2 remains the foundation of AWS infrastructure, offering complete control over your computing environment. You choose instance types optimized for compute, memory, storage, or GPU workloads.
Business Value:
- Scale from one to thousands of instances based on demand
- Pay only for the capacity you use with per-second billing
- Deploy applications in minutes, not weeks
- Choose from 500+ instance types for optimal price-performance
Best For: Traditional applications, microservices, batch processing, gaming servers, development environments
Developer Tip: Use EC2 for workloads requiring specific OS configurations or applications not yet containerized. Combine with Auto Scaling Groups for automatic capacity management.
2. AWS Lambda
What It Is: A serverless compute service that runs code in response to events without managing servers.
Why Developers Need It: Lambda eliminates infrastructure management. Upload your code, and AWS handles everything else—scaling, patching, monitoring. You only pay for actual compute time in milliseconds.
Business Value:
- Zero infrastructure management overhead
- Automatic scaling from 1 to 10,000+ concurrent executions
- Cost optimization—pay only when code executes
- Built-in high availability and fault tolerance
Best For: API backends, data processing, real-time file processing, scheduled tasks, event-driven architectures
Developer Tip: Perfect for microservices architectures and event-driven workflows. Supports Node.js, Python, Java, Go, .NET, and custom runtimes.
3. Amazon ECS (Elastic Container Service)
What It Is: Fully managed container orchestration service for Docker containers.
Why Developers Need It: ECS simplifies running containerized applications at scale without the complexity of managing Kubernetes infrastructure. Integrates seamlessly with other AWS services.
Business Value:
- Deploy and manage containers without Kubernetes complexity
- Integrate with AWS security, networking, and monitoring services
- Choose between EC2 or Fargate (serverless) launch types
- Automatic container placement and health monitoring
Best For: Microservices, batch processing, machine learning pipelines, modernizing legacy applications
Developer Tip: Use Fargate launch type for true serverless containers—no server management required. ECS integrates natively with Application Load Balancer for production deployments.
Storage Services: Persisting Your Data
4. Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
What It Is: Object storage service offering industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance.
Why Developers Need It: S3 is the backbone of cloud storage, storing everything from static website assets to data lake analytics. With 99.999999999% (11 nines) durability, your data is safer than almost any on-premises solution.
Business Value:
- Unlimited storage capacity—store petabytes of data
- Cost-effective storage tiers from frequent access to archival
- Built-in versioning, lifecycle policies, and cross-region replication
- Foundation for data lakes, backups, and disaster recovery
Best For: Static website hosting, application file storage, data lakes, backups, media storage, content distribution
Developer Tip: Use S3 storage classes (Standard, Intelligent-Tiering, Glacier) to optimize costs. Enable versioning for critical data and implement lifecycle policies for automatic archival.
5. Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)
What It Is: Block storage volumes for EC2 instances, functioning like virtual hard drives.
Why Developers Need It: EBS provides persistent storage that survives instance termination, essential for databases and stateful applications requiring consistent low-latency access.
Business Value:
- Persistent storage independent of instance lifecycle
- Multiple volume types optimized for different workloads (SSD, HDD)
- Point-in-time snapshots for backup and disaster recovery
- Encryption at rest for security compliance
Best For: Database storage, file systems, boot volumes, enterprise applications
Developer Tip: Choose gp3 volumes for most workloads—better performance at lower cost than gp2. Use snapshots for backups and disaster recovery.
Database Services: Managing Your Data
6. Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service)
What It Is: Managed relational database service supporting MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server, and Amazon Aurora.
Why Developers Need It: RDS eliminates database administration tasks—automated backups, patching, monitoring, and scaling—letting developers focus on application logic instead of database operations.
Business Value:
- Automated backups, patching, and maintenance windows
- Multi-AZ deployments for high availability
- Read replicas for scaling read-heavy workloads
- 50+ database performance and security metrics
Best For: Transactional applications, e-commerce platforms, CRM systems, ERP applications
Developer Tip: Start with db.t3 or db.t4g instance classes for development, then scale to larger instances as needed. Enable automated backups and test your restore procedures.
7. Amazon DynamoDB
What It Is: Fully managed NoSQL database delivering single-digit millisecond performance at any scale.
Why Developers Need It: DynamoDB offers consistent performance regardless of data size—whether storing megabytes or petabytes. Serverless pricing means you pay only for actual reads and writes.
Business Value:
- Unlimited throughput and storage scaling
- Single-digit millisecond latency at any scale
- Built-in security, backup, and restore
- Global tables for multi-region active-active replication
Best For: Gaming leaderboards, mobile apps, IoT applications, session management, real-time bidding
Developer Tip: Design your table schema carefully—DynamoDB's performance depends on proper partition key selection. Use on-demand pricing for unpredictable workloads.
8. Amazon ElastiCache
What It Is: Fully managed in-memory caching service supporting Redis and Memcached.
Why Developers Need It: ElastiCache accelerates application performance by caching frequently accessed data, reducing database load, and improving response times from seconds to milliseconds.
Business Value:
- Sub-millisecond response times for cached data
- Reduce database costs by offloading read traffic
- Session storage for stateless applications
- Real-time analytics and leaderboards
Best For: Session stores, database query caching, real-time analytics, pub/sub messaging
Developer Tip: Use Redis for advanced data structures and persistence; Memcached for simple caching. Right-size your cluster to avoid memory pressure.
Networking & Content Delivery
9. Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)
What It Is: An isolated virtual network where you launch AWS resources with complete control over IP addressing, subnets, and routing.
Why Developers Need It: VPC provides network-level security and isolation, essential for production deployments. You define exactly which resources can communicate and how they connect to the internet.
Business Value:
- Complete network isolation for security and compliance
- Control inbound and outbound traffic with security groups
- Create public and private subnets for multi-tier architectures
- VPN and Direct Connect options for hybrid cloud
Best For: Production applications, multi-tier architectures, compliance requirements, hybrid cloud connectivity
Developer Tip: Use separate VPCs for development, staging, and production. Implement bastion hosts or AWS Systems Manager Session Manager for secure instance access.
10. Amazon CloudFront
What It Is: Global content delivery network (CDN) delivering data, videos, applications, and APIs with low latency.
Why Developers Need It: CloudFront caches content at 400+ edge locations worldwide, dramatically improving performance for global users while reducing origin server load and costs.
Business Value:
- Reduce latency for global users by 50-90%
- Decrease bandwidth costs by caching content at the edge
- Built-in DDoS protection and AWS WAF integration
- SSL/TLS encryption for secure content delivery
Best For: Website acceleration, video streaming, API acceleration, software distribution
Developer Tip: Use CloudFront with S3 for static websites. Configure cache behaviors to optimize hit ratios. Leverage Lambda@Edge for dynamic content manipulation.
11. Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)
What It Is: Automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets.
Why Developers Need It: ELB ensures high availability by distributing traffic across healthy instances, automatically routing around failures. Essential for production-grade applications.
Business Value:
- Automatic fault tolerance and high availability
- SSL/TLS termination reduces compute load on instances
- Health checks ensure traffic only reaches healthy targets
- Integrated with Auto Scaling for elastic capacity
Types:
- Application Load Balancer: HTTP/HTTPS traffic, advanced routing
- Network Load Balancer: Ultra-low latency, TCP/UDP traffic
- Gateway Load Balancer: Deploy third-party virtual appliances
Developer Tip: Use Application Load Balancer for most web applications. Enable access logs to CloudWatch for traffic analysis and debugging.
Security & Identity Services
12. AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management)
What It Is: Service for securely controlling access to AWS resources through users, groups, roles, and policies.
Why Developers Need It: IAM is the foundation of AWS security, controlling who can access what resources. Properly configured IAM prevents unauthorized access and enables the principle of least privilege.
Business Value:
- Fine-grained access control to all AWS services
- No additional charge—included with AWS account
- Temporary security credentials for enhanced security
- Integration with corporate identity systems
Best For: User management, service-to-service authentication, temporary access credentials, compliance requirements
Developer Tip: Never use the root account for daily operations. Create IAM roles for applications instead of embedding credentials. Enable MFA for privileged accounts.
13. AWS Secrets Manager
What It Is: Service for rotating, managing, and retrieving database credentials, API keys, and other secrets.
Why Developers Need It: Secrets Manager eliminates hardcoded credentials in code—a common security vulnerability. Automatic rotation reduces breach risk from compromised credentials.
Business Value:
- Automatic secret rotation for databases and services
- Encrypted storage of sensitive credentials
- Audit trail of secret access via CloudTrail
- Programmatic secret retrieval in applications
Best For: Database credentials, API keys, OAuth tokens, encryption keys
Developer Tip: Use Secrets Manager for production secrets; Parameter Store for non-sensitive configuration. Implement automatic rotation for database credentials.
14. AWS KMS (Key Management Service)
What It Is: Managed service for creating and controlling encryption keys used to encrypt data.
Why Developers Need It: KMS provides centralized key management with granular access controls, audit trails, and automatic key rotation—essential for compliance and data protection.
Business Value:
- FIPS 140-2 validated encryption for compliance
- Integrated with most AWS services for transparent encryption
- Automatic key rotation for enhanced security
- Detailed audit logs of all key usage
Best For: Data encryption, compliance requirements, protecting sensitive information
Developer Tip: Use customer-managed keys (CMKs) for sensitive data. Enable automatic key rotation. Use KMS grants for temporary, cross-account access.
Developer Tools & Deployment
15. AWS CodePipeline
What It Is: Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) service for automating release pipelines.
Why Developers Need It: CodePipeline automates build, test, and deployment phases, enabling rapid, reliable application updates. Integrates with GitHub, Jenkins, and third-party tools.
Business Value:
- Automate release processes from code commit to production
- Reduce manual errors in deployments
- Parallel execution for faster delivery
- Visual workflow for pipeline monitoring
Best For: Automated deployments, continuous delivery, release automation
Developer Tip: Combine CodePipeline with CodeBuild and CodeDeploy for complete AWS-native CI/CD. Add manual approval stages for production deployments.
16. AWS CloudFormation
What It Is: An Infrastructure as Code service that provisions AWS resources using templates.
Why Developers Need It: CloudFormation treats infrastructure as code—version-controlled, repeatable, and consistent. Deploy entire environments from templates, ensuring development matches production.
Business Value:
- Consistent infrastructure across environments
- Version control for infrastructure changes
- Automate resource provisioning and configuration
- Rollback capabilities for failed deployments
Best For: Infrastructure automation, multi-environment deployments, disaster recovery
Developer Tip: Start with AWS-provided sample templates. Use nested stacks for complex infrastructures. Store templates in version control alongside application code.
17. Amazon CloudWatch
What It Is: Monitoring and observability service for AWS resources and applications.
Why Developers Need It: CloudWatch provides visibility into application performance, resource utilization, and operational health. Set alarms to automatically respond to issues before users notice.
Business Value:
- Unified view of logs, metrics, and events
- Custom dashboards for operational insights
- Automated responses to operational changes
- Long-term data retention for trend analysis
Best For: Application monitoring, log aggregation, performance tracking, operational alerts
Developer Tip: Create custom metrics for business KPIs. Use CloudWatch Logs Insights for log analysis. Set up dashboards for at-a-glance system health.
API & Integration Services
18. Amazon API Gateway
What It Is: Fully managed service for creating, publishing, and managing APIs at any scale.
Why Developers Need It: API Gateway handles all the heavy lifting of API management—authentication, rate limiting, monitoring—letting developers focus on business logic in Lambda or backend services.
Business Value:
- Handle millions of concurrent API calls
- Built-in DDoS protection and throttling
- Multiple authorization options (IAM, Cognito, Lambda)
- Cache API responses to reduce backend load
Best For: RESTful APIs, WebSocket APIs, serverless backends, microservices integration
Developer Tip: Use API Gateway with Lambda for serverless APIs. Enable caching to reduce costs and improve performance. Implement request validation to protect backends.
19. Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service)
What It Is: Fully managed message queuing service for decoupling application components.
Why Developers Need It: SQS enables asynchronous communication between services, improving fault tolerance and scalability. Messages persist if downstream services are temporarily unavailable.
Business Value:
- Decouple components for independent scaling
- Eliminate message loss with persistent storage
- Automatic scaling to handle any throughput
- No upfront costs or minimum fees
Best For: Asynchronous processing, work queues, order processing, microservices communication
Developer Tip: Use standard queues for maximum throughput; FIFO queues when order matters. Implement dead-letter queues for failed message handling.
20. Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service)
What It Is: Pub/sub messaging service for application-to-application and application-to-person communication.
Why Developers Need It: SNS delivers messages to multiple subscribers simultaneously—other applications, Lambda functions, mobile devices, or email addresses. Perfect for fan-out architectures.
Business Value:
- Deliver messages to millions of subscribers instantly
- Support for SMS, email, mobile push, and HTTP endpoints
- Message filtering for targeted delivery
- Pay only for messages published and delivered
Best For: Event notifications, mobile push notifications, fan-out patterns, alerts, and alarms
Developer Tip: Combine SNS with SQS for reliable, scalable messaging patterns. Use message filtering to reduce unnecessary deliveries.
Choosing the Right Services for Your Use Case
Understanding these 20 AWS services is just the beginning. The real value comes from combining them strategically:
E-commerce Application Stack:
- Frontend: S3 + CloudFront
- API Layer: API Gateway + Lambda
- Database: RDS for transactions, DynamoDB for session store
- Caching: ElastiCache for product catalog
- Queue: SQS for order processing
- Notifications: SNS for order confirmations
Data Processing Pipeline:
- Storage: S3 for raw data
- Compute: Lambda for event-driven processing
- Database: DynamoDB for processed results
- Queuing: SQS for reliable message delivery
- Monitoring: CloudWatch for pipeline health
Microservices Architecture:
- Containers: ECS with Fargate
- Networking: VPC with Application Load Balancer
- Service Mesh: App Mesh (bonus service!)
- Secrets: Secrets Manager for credentials
- Deployment: CodePipeline for CI/CD
- Observability: CloudWatch for unified monitoring
Accelerate Your AWS Journey with Axalin
Mastering 20 AWS services takes time, experimentation, and real-world experience. While this guide provides the foundation, building production-ready applications requires deep expertise in architecture, security, cost optimization, and operational best practices.
At Axalin Consultancy Services, we've helped organizations across finance, healthcare, e-commerce, manufacturing, and logistics build scalable, secure AWS applications. With 50+ years of combined leadership experience and AWS-certified professionals, we accelerate your cloud journey while avoiding costly mistakes.
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AWS Architecture and Development
- Application architecture design following the AWS Well-Architected Framework
- Microservices and serverless architecture implementation
- Container orchestration with ECS, EKS, and Fargate
- Database selection and optimization strategies
- API design and integration patterns
DevOps and Automation
- CI/CD pipeline implementation with AWS-native tools
- Infrastructure as Code using CloudFormation and Terraform
- Automated deployment and testing frameworks
- Container and serverless deployment strategies
Security and Compliance
- AWS security best practices implementation
- IAM policies and least privilege access design
- Encryption and key management strategies
- Compliance frameworks (HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2)
- Security monitoring and incident response
Cost Optimization
- Right-sizing recommendations and implementation
- Reserved Instance and Savings Plan strategies
- Cost allocation and tagging frameworks
- Automated cost monitoring and alerting
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Flexible Engagement Models:
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Start Building Better on AWS
These 20 AWS services form the foundation of modern cloud applications. Whether you're building your first serverless API, migrating legacy applications to containers, or architecting microservices at scale, understanding these core services accelerates development and reduces operational complexity.
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