What This Is
Amazon Web Services provides the cloud infrastructure layer for services that sit outside your primary application hosting — email delivery, file storage, serverless compute, and content delivery. We integrate specific AWS services into your application architecture where they solve real problems, without adopting the full AWS ecosystem when simpler solutions exist.
We run AWS in production across our own platforms. Amazon SES handles bulk email delivery with full event tracking — delivery confirmations, bounces, complaints, opens, and clicks processed through webhook handlers and queue jobs. S3 stores assets and generated files. These are not experimental integrations; they are production services we monitor, maintain, and depend on daily.
AWS’s breadth is both its strength and its trap. The catalogue contains hundreds of services, and it is easy to over-engineer an architecture that requires AWS expertise just to deploy a code change. We take a practical approach: use AWS services where they provide clear value (SES for email at scale, S3 for object storage, CloudFront for CDN), and keep the rest of your stack on straightforward, manageable infrastructure.
When You Need This
AWS infrastructure is the right choice when your application needs specific cloud services that your hosting platform does not provide natively. Common scenarios:
- You need transactional and bulk email at scale with deliverability management, and SES offers the best cost-to-reliability ratio
- Your application requires object storage for user uploads, generated files, or media assets with S3’s durability and access control
- CDN delivery through CloudFront would improve performance for static assets or media served to geographically distributed users
- You need serverless functions for specific tasks (image processing, PDF generation) without running dedicated servers
- Your infrastructure needs message queuing (SQS) for decoupling application components or handling burst workloads
This is not the right approach if your application can run entirely on managed hosting with standard compute, storage, and email. AWS adds operational complexity — only use it where the capabilities justify that cost.
How We Work
AWS infrastructure projects start with service selection — identifying which AWS services solve your specific requirements without introducing unnecessary complexity. We evaluate each service against simpler alternatives: does SES provide enough value over your hosting provider’s email service? Does S3 solve a problem your server’s filesystem cannot?
Integration follows our standard service layer pattern. Each AWS service gets a dedicated integration layer in your Laravel application. S3 uses Laravel’s filesystem abstraction. SES integrates through the mail system with custom webhook processing. Lambda functions are invoked through a service wrapper. Your application code interacts with the service layer, not with AWS SDKs directly.
IAM and security follow the principle of least privilege. Each service gets its own IAM user with the minimum permissions required. Credentials are stored in environment configuration, never in code. Access policies are documented and reviewable. For SES specifically, we configure domain verification, DKIM signing, SPF records, and the bounce/complaint handling that protects your sending reputation.
What You Get
- SES email delivery — transactional and bulk email with delivery, bounce, and complaint event processing
- S3 storage — object storage with lifecycle policies, presigned URLs, and access control
- CloudFront CDN — content delivery for static assets and media with edge caching
- Lambda functions — serverless compute for isolated processing tasks
- SQS queuing — message queue integration for background processing and component decoupling
- IAM configuration — properly scoped credentials and access policies for each service
- Monitoring — CloudWatch alerts for service health, delivery rates, and error thresholds
Technologies We Use
- Amazon SES — email delivery with SNS-based event notifications and reputation management
- Amazon S3 — object storage with lifecycle management and access control
- Amazon CloudFront — CDN with SSL, custom domains, and cache behaviour configuration
- AWS Lambda — serverless compute with event-driven invocation
- Amazon SQS — managed message queuing for reliable background processing
- AWS IAM — identity and access management with least-privilege policies
- Laravel — filesystem, mail, and HTTP client integrations with AWS services
Related Systems
AWS infrastructure supports application-level features built with Laravel. SES powers email in business automation systems. S3 stores files for client portals. CloudFront delivers assets for web applications. See also our AWS API integration page for application-level AWS API work.
Talk to Us About AWS
If your application needs specific AWS services integrated properly into your architecture, get in touch and we will identify the right services and build the integration.
