AWS Amplify limitations
Compared to self-hosting, a serverless platform such as AWS Amplify limits what kind of Next.js apps you can run.
Interested in learning more about Self-hosting Next.js apps?
Why Self-Host Next.js Apps?
Self-hosting modern Next.js apps is the most cost-effective and powerful way to create interactive, rich, and powerful apps.
Ruslan Gainutdinov
Learn more about AWS Amplify
AWS offers an easy-to-use platform to run your apps called Amplify. It is a serverless platform where you don't need to manage any infrastructure, and if your apps are not in use, your cost scales to zero*. Learn more about AWS Amplify on the official site.
Downsides of using AWS Amplify
While getting started might be easy (once you get an AWS account configured), there is a lot of things that ultimately prevent you from running complex, modern apps on it:
- Opinionated way of doing things: e.g., the forced use of GraphQL with their model. Not every app needs GraphQL.
- DynamoDB is extremely limited in what you can do, making it suitable for small, simple apps. However, on a larger scale, only niche apps can work great with it (so is Firebase, btw)
- Next.js streaming is not supported
- Limit on the size of the backend code (250Mb), AWS Lambda limit
- Image size limit (4.3Mb) for images processed with next/image.
- You need to know a lot about AWS (S3, IAM, Cognito)
Amplify support for Next.js - AWS Amplify Hosting
Describes AWS Amplify deployment and hosting support for Next.js applications.
