AWS, Amazon Web Services, is where we host, store, scale and back up many of the systems we build. Instead of buying and maintaining your own servers, you rent computing power, storage and databases by the hour, and add or remove capacity as your business changes.

For a business owner, AWS means your software can start small and grow without a hardware purchase, your files and backups are kept in more than one place, and you can choose data centre regions close to your customers.

What we build with it

  • Hosting for web applications, APIs and admin portals
  • File storage for documents, invoices and product images
  • Managed databases with automated backups
  • SaaS infrastructure with separate environments for testing and production
  • Scheduled jobs and background processing
  • Email delivery and notification pipelines
  • Content delivery that speeds up pages for customers in other countries

Why we choose it

  • Pay for what you use. You start on small instances and increase capacity only when traffic justifies it.
  • Backups and recovery. Snapshots, versioned storage and multiple availability zones protect your data against a single failure.
  • Breadth of services. Storage, databases, queues and email sit on one bill and one set of access controls.
  • Fine-grained security. Access can be restricted per person and per service, so no one holds more permissions than they need.

When something else fits better

AWS is powerful, and that power comes with complexity and a bill that needs watching. For a small business website or a single internal app with steady traffic, a well-managed VPS is simpler and often cheaper. For a mobile app that mainly needs sign-in, notifications and a real-time database, Firebase may cover everything with less setup. We recommend AWS when you need its flexibility, not by default.

How we work with it

  • We define infrastructure in scripts or templates where practical, so environments can be recreated rather than rebuilt by hand.
  • Production, staging and testing are kept separate, each with its own credentials.
  • We set up billing alerts and review usage, so costs do not creep up unnoticed.
  • Backups are scheduled and restore steps are tested, not just assumed to work.
  • The AWS account is in your name; you hold the root access and we keep only the permissions the work needs.