Developers of mobile apps are well aware of the difficulties inherent in designing a novel authentication and authorization system. For this reason, Amazon Web Services created Amazon Cognito. If you are new to Amazon Cognito and plan to incorporate it into our project, this post is for you; it covers all you need to know about the product.
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What Is Amazon Cognito?
Building and maintaining a robust authentication and user-management system is one of the major hurdles of modern software development. As a pioneer in cloud-based software solutions, Amazon Web Services (AWS) created Amazon Cognito to address this problem. Amazon Cognito facilitates authentication, authorization, and user management for web and mobile applications.
With Amazon Cognito, your app users have multiple ways of logging in to your app. For instance, they can log in using a username and password or alternatively by a third-party platform such as Facebook, Apple, Google, or Amazon. Learn all you need to know about Amazon Cognito from this comprehensive guide.
A Rundown Of Amazon Cognito
As aforementioned, Amazon Cognito is a software solution that facilitates authentication, authorization, and user management systems for both mobile and web applications.
Amazon Cognito comprises two main components: User pools and Identity pools. Users are added and managed by “user pools,” which are similar to user directories. On the other hand, identity pools are used for accessing other AWS services. Identity pools and user pools can be used exclusively of each other.
The following is a rundown of how Amazon Cognito works.
- To begin, have your app's user register with a user pool; once that's done, they'll be able to use the app with the tokens generated.
- After that, using an identity pool, your app can trade the tokens it obtained from the user pool for access credentials to AWS.
- After that's done, the user of your app can log in to other AWS services, such as
- Amazon S3 or DynamoDB, using their newly acquired AWS credentials.
When a user's device is connected to AWS, data is synchronized across all of the user's devices so that the user always has access to the most up-to-date version. When you're not connected to the internet, you can preserve your data in an SQLite database on your computer for later use. When using Amazon Cognito, you may connect data sets to identities and securely store sensitive data as key/value pairs in the cloud-based service's in-house Sync database. Each user has a total storage capacity of 20 MB, with a maximum of 1 MB per data collection.
What Is Amazon Cognito Used For?
As aforementioned, Amazon Cognito enables simple and secure authentication, authorization, and user management. If you need to create a login system for your mobile or web application, Amazon Cognito might be the perfect solution for you. Users of your app don't need to create a new login just to access your service; they can utilize an existing Google, Apple, or Amazon account.
The following are some of the benefits of incorporating Amazon Cognito into your application.
- An easy way to manage user accounts, including logins and account data.
- You get access to Federate identities from social identity providers.
- You can easily synchronize data between multiple devices.
- Allow users of their apps to access other AWS services securely by defining roles and assigning those roles to specific users.
Because Cognito takes care of all authentication needs, developers can concentrate on making useful apps and websites. Time to market and value creation can be sped up, and the development cycle shortened if it is implemented. Amazon Cognito is part of the AWS ecosystem. Cognito account and invoicing details can be viewed in full through the AWS Management Console, which is accessible to all businesses.
What’s The Distinction Between User Pools and Identity Pools?
When using Amazon Cognito, you need to understand the difference between user pools and identity pools. So what are they? User pools are user directories that provide sign-up and sign-in options for users. Customers can sign up for your app using Amazon Cognito, Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), or other identity providers like Google or Facebook. Each of your app users will be assigned a directory profile.
You can access the user profiles through a Software Development Kit (SDK) if you are a developer. User pools allow you to do things like give multifactor authentication, check for compromised credentials, verify users through email or phone, and more.
Identity pools can be configured if your organization needs to provide users with AWS resources. Identity pools are federated identities that facilitate authentication via user pools, federated identity providers, SAML identity providers, and even unauthenticated identities (guest users). Organizations can generate distinctive identities and give users authorization by using identity pools.
How Much Does Amazon Cognito Cost?
When using Amazon Cognito, just like most AWS products, you only pay for what you use just like most AWS products. When using Amazon Cognito, you are only charged for identity management and data synchronization.
Cognito Identity's User Pool service is subscription-based, meaning you pay only for the number of active users on a monthly basis. If a user performs an identity operation (such as sign up, sign in, token refresh, password change, or updating a user account attribute) within a calendar month, then that user is considered an MAU. Subsequent sessions, as well as inactive users within the same calendar month, are free.
Amazon's free tier allows 50,000 MAUs for users who sign in directly to Cognito User Pools and 50 MAUs for users who sign in via SAML 2.0-based identity providers, so there's plenty of room to test the product out. Even after your 12-month AWS Free Tier contract ends, you can continue to use the service at no cost. This perk is available to both new and existing AWS users.
For detailed pricing, visit the Amazon Cognito pricing page.
Bottom Line
Ultimately, Amazon Cognito is a promising option for users looking for an easy way to integrate user management and sync functionality into their own applications. There’s no doubt that Amazon’s emphasis on user privacy makes this a unique tool worth considering. All in all, there’s definitely more than enough here to recommend Amazon Cognito as a viable option. Give it a try and see whether it meets your needs.