Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) is a notification service provided as part of Amazon Web Services since 2010.^[1] It provides a low-cost infrastructure for the mass delivery of messages.

Amazon SNS acts as a single message bus that can message to a variety of devices and platforms, including Kindle Fire and Baidu. A single code interface can address all of these equally, or message formats can be tailored to the particular needs of each platform.^[2] Amazon SNS can also deliver messages by SMS to 200+ countries.^[3]

Description

Amazon SNS uses the publish/subscribe model for push delivery of messages.^[1] Recipients subscribe to one or more 'topics' within Amazon SNS. Typically, this is hidden from the user as an internal part of a mobile app.^[4] Receipt of a message may also be hidden from the user: this service is largely aimed at the internal processing of specific apps rather than as a generic email substitute. A game might receive bonus-level announcements or unlock keys for in-game purchases by this route. A ticket booking app could use it for confirmation vouchers, boarding passes or notifications of a delay to a flight.

Pricing

The first 1 million Amazon SNS requests per month are free, and $0.50 per 1 million requests thereafter will be charged as per the latest costing structure.^[3] Pricing varies according to the delivery mechanism: there is a charge to request a message ($0.50 /million) and a varying charge for how (and if) the recipient chooses to receive it. HTTP is cheapest for retrieval ($0.60 /million), email is around 30 times this ($20 /million) and SMS considerably (hundreds of times) more ($7,500 /million).^[5] Like most cloud services, initial access costs are kept low and there are no sign-up or subscription charges.