Are there any disadvantages to using AWS Amplify to host SPAs compared to CodePipeline?

Question

At home, I use AWS Amplify to host my personal portfolio website since it is so easy and cheap to host. At work, they have me making other SPAs (in vue.js) and putting the code in private GitHub repos, but I have to host the websites on EC2 instances and push the code using AWS CodeDeploy/CodePipeline.

Using EC2s to do this is so much more expensive (Amplify: $12-20/year for domain name, EC2: ~$80-90/year for compute time) and time consuming.

Is there a reason someone might not want to use Amplify when building SPAs?

My initial thought is that using CodePipeline might get the user to the page faster since it's already built and ready to go. Although the site I have in mind is for internal users and will won't be visited very often, maybe a few times a week. Is that right? Feel free to correct me / my assumptions.

Junto

Answer 1

I wasn't able to find much online, but talking to AWS professionals helped me find an answer:

• AWS Amplify is a managed service, so you have much less control over the environment/installed packages that might affect your website / you have to deal with other implied disadvantages of managed services
• The build time will eventually cost more than it is to run the EC2 if a lot of people visit the site
• You don't have the ability to use load balancers to distribute traffic

Junto

Answer 2

You may see here https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/host-your-apps-with-aws-amplify-console-from-the-aws-amplify-cli/ that is mentioned about AWS Amplify are able to use the:

1. Git repo / Codecommit
2. AWS Cloudfront
3. AWS S3

With the AWS Amplify also can do continuous deployment similar like AWS Codepipelines

Perhaps that can help you

Brooklyn

Hey! I appreciate your answer. Although, it doesn't answer my question about the advantages or disadvantages between using these services for hosing SPAs – Junto

Hey, I'm really sorry. Could you elaborate your question My initial thought is that using CodePipeline might get the user to the page faster since it's already built and ready to go. Although the site I have in mind is for internal users and will won't be visited very often, maybe a few times a week. Is that right? Feel free to correct me / my assumptions. As I knew CodePipelines are just the continuous development, do you mean fast to build or maybe something ? – Brooklyn

It seemed to me that codepipline and amplify are doing the same thing: updating the website whenever there's a change on github. It's just with amplify, it's built when the website is hit while codepipeline already has it built. So I was asking, since they are both acting the same way, is there any disadvantage to amplify? It seems like the easier option but I wanted to be sure. – Junto

Hey, seems it is the same with the others codepipeline, the easiest thing is you don't need to managed infrastructure, if you are used EC2 then you need to managed infrastructure. perhaps that clarify you – Brooklyn