What is Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service)?

Amazon SNS is a fully managed pub/sub messaging service that enables you to send notifications to multiple subscribers simultaneously. It supports multiple delivery protocols including HTTP/HTTPS endpoints, email, SMS, mobile push notifications, AWS Lambda, and SQS queues — making it ideal for application notifications and event-driven architectures.

What is the difference between Amazon SNS and SQS?

SNS is a pub/sub service where one message can be delivered to multiple subscribers simultaneously (fan-out). SQS is a queue service where messages are stored until a consumer processes them (point-to-point). They are often used together: SNS publishes to multiple SQS queues for decoupled, parallel processing of events.

How much does Amazon SNS cost?

Amazon SNS pricing is based on: the number of API requests, deliveries to HTTP/HTTPS endpoints, and mobile push notifications. The SNS free tier includes 1 million requests and 100,000 HTTP deliveries per month. Email notifications are charged per notification, and SMS has per-message costs that vary by country.

How do you use Amazon SNS with AWS Lambda?

To use SNS with Lambda: create an SNS topic, create a Lambda function with SNS event source configured, and grant SNS permission to invoke Lambda. When a message is published to the SNS topic, Lambda is automatically triggered — enabling serverless event-driven processing of notifications and events.

What Is AWS SNS (Simple Notification Service)? Topics & Use Cases

March 11, 2021 / Nirav Shah

What Is AWS Simple Notification Service (SNS)? Complete Overview

This is the AWS service that allows you to send individual messages to a large number of recipients or other distributed AWS services.

SNS is a Push notification AWS service.
SNS is a fast, flexible, fully managed notification service.
It is a web service that coordinates and manages the delivery or sending of messages to subscribing endpoints or clients.
Messages published to an SNS topic will be delivered to the subscriber immediately.
This is a pay-as-you-go model with no upfront cost AWS service.
Reliable service.
At least three copies of the data are stored across multiple AZ in the same region.
It is a way of sending a message when you are using auto-scaling, it triggers an SNS service which will email you that “Your EC2 instance is growing”.

AWS Simple Notification Service

Publisher – Publisher is also known as producers that produce and send the message to the SNS which is a logical access point.
– Subscriber such as web servers, email addresses, Amazon SQS queues, AWS Lambda, receive the message or notification from the SNS over one of the supported protocols, Like Amazon SQS, Emails, Lambda, HTTPS, SMS.

SNS Topic

It is a logical point and communication channel.
Each topic has a unique name.
A topic Name is limited to 256 alphanumeric characters
The topic name must be unique within the AWS account
Each topic is assigned an AWS ARN once it gets created.
A topic can support Subscribers and notification deliveries over multiple protocols
Messages/requests published to a single topic can be delivered to multiple protocols as configured when creating each subscriber.
Delivery formats/transport protocols(end-points)
- SMS
- Emails
- EMail – Json for applications
- HTTP/HTTPS
- SQS
- AWS lambda
Supported push Notifications Platforms
- Amazon Device Messaging
- Apple Push Notifications service
- Google cloud messaging
- Windows Push Notification service

There are some Amazon SNS alternatives

Amazon Kinesis Datastream
Amazon Managed queue service
Apache Kafka
Twilio
Pusher

Amazon SNS have different prices as per the region. Please go through the official page for more information.

Also Read: 17 NEW AWS SERVICES IN 2022 | AWS LATEST SERVICES

FAQs:

How do I publish a message to an SNS topic?
Can I customize the message format when publishing to SNS?
Is there a limit to the number of subscriptions or topics I can have in SNS?
Can I use SNS with other AWS services?

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Nirav Shah

Nirav Shah is the Director of Eternal Web Pvt Ltd, an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner and certified Odoo Partner based in the UK. With over a decade of experience in cloud computing, digital transformation, and ERP implementation, Nirav helps enterprises adopt the right technology to solve complex business challenges. He specialises in AWS infrastructure, Odoo ERP, and web development solutions for businesses across the UK and beyond.