#45 AWS Real Free Tier 🤯

This week, our serverless expert is AWS Community Builder Davide De Sio, our spotlight falls on AWS Community Builder Daniele Frasca, we look at the latest service releases, news, articles, & more!

Jul 13, 2025

Welcome

In last week’s issue, our serverless expert was AWS Community Builder Antonio Lagrotteria, and our spotlight fell on AWS expert Linda Haviv!
This week, our serverless expert is AWS Community Builder Davide De Sio, our spotlight falls on AWS Community Builder Daniele Frasca, we look at the latest AWS service releases, blog posts, hints and tips, news and more!
This week AWS released a truly free ‘Free Tier’ and it was also the AWS CDK’s birthday!
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Leighton.

A Glimpse into My Week 🎤

This week, I published an article titled “Using Amazon Nova Canvas Virtual Try-On in Ecommerce Solutions“.

This is the second article I have written recently on AI image manipulation using Amazon Bedrock and the Nova Canvas model, and it was really fun to play with as a technology!

📰 Articles that caught the eye

Here are some stand-out articles I read during the week in the World of Serverless, AI, Engineering and Architecture!

⭐ My favourite this week was the back to basics post by Ran Isenberg (although not sure on that hat mind…)

Jimmy Dahlqvist has a great article titled “Extending My Blog with Proofreading by Amazon Nova“.
Vijay Kumar Kodam has an interesting video and article on how he “Built an AI Agent using Strands Agents SDK“.
Ran Isenberg covers “14 AWS Lambda Security Best Practices to Secure Your Serverless Applications“.
Yan Cui covers “AppSync: how to implement unauthenticated operations“.
Vadym Kazulkin discusses “AWS Fault Injection Service for AWS Lambda - Part 3 FIS Lambda Action invocation-http-integration-response“.
Martin Mueller has a great article on “A property listings AI chat with MCP integrations running in AWS“.

🎓 Ask the Expert

Each week, I ask a different serverless expert the same three questions to get their personal insights - this week, we have AWS Community Builder Davide De Sio:

Opinions are the author’s and do not express the views of their employer.

1. What is one common mistake you see teams making when implementing serverless solutions, and how can they avoid it?

As a consultant, my role is often to guide teams with very traditional approaches toward adopting and effectively using serverless solutions. So rather than focusing on "mistakes", I’d highlight two recurring patterns that usually serve as starting points for discussing what adopting a serverless mindset really means: the “lambdalith”, a single Lambda function with a proxy route on API Gateway, and the persistent urge to replicate the entire cloud environment locally.

Don’t get me wrong: in many cases, having a microservice with multiple routes handled by a single Lambda makes sense and can be a solid starting point. But using Lambda merely as a deployment mechanism means you’re missing out on all the other infrastructure benefits that serverless offers, features that can save you from writing tons of boilerplate code. If you’re truly embracing a new paradigm, you shouldn’t ignore those capabilities from the outset of your project.

As for replicating the cloud locally, I could write a whole book about that! Maybe I’m just too passionate about the cloud (or maybe I’ve seen the abyss of "it works on my machine, now let’s just deploy it") to fully appreciate the charm of managing everything locally, down to every config file. I get it: there’s value in mirroring your cloud environment as closely as possible on your machine. But with serverless, the real power lies in how quickly you can spin up ephemeral environments at very low cost using just a few commands. Tools like CDK or Amplify let you create a full developer stack in minutes, ensuring consistency across the team. That’s what makes the serverless developer experience so compelling to me: Infrastructure as Code written for both development and production, not just as a deployment strategy.

2. Which serverless tool or service are you most excited about right now, and why?

Right now, I’m all-in on Amazon Bedrock. It’s a fantastic service: both from a developer experience standpoint and in terms of how rapidly it’s evolving and delivering new capabilities.

Some might say there are so many ways to use it across so many architectures that it can feel overwhelming, but that’s exactly what fascinates me. I started experimenting with it directly in the AWS console as a complete GenAI beginner. Before long, I was integrating it into Lambda functions using the Converse API. From there, I quickly moved on to building full agentic solutions and MCP servers using frameworks like the Strands Agents SDK (which natively integrates with Bedrock) or boilerplates shared by AWS Builders, Heroes, and Architects.

I really believe we’re at a pivotal moment: one that’s going to reshape our careers as builders in a very short time.

3. What is your favourite trick or tip when working with serverless that the readers may find interesting?

Before reinventing the wheel, look for an existing solution from an AWS Builder, Hero, or Architect. There’s a goldmine of resources out there, from ServerlessLand and high-quality newsletters like Serverless Advocate, to GitHub repos and real-world examples straight from AWS.

It might sound like basic advice, but starting from a proven solution instead of from scratch has two huge advantages: first, you realise you're not alone and your use case is probably shared by others who’ve already solved it (often in elegant, production-ready ways). Second, you’ll discover new approaches and possibilities you might not have considered. That opens the door to exploring new services, improving your developer experience, modernising your stack, staying on the cutting edge, and avoiding a lot of unnecessary headaches.

✅ Bonus tip: join the hashtag#believeinsls discord! There is a community there to answer any questions you may have without getting overzealous on serverless or without judgment! Check it out!

🚀 New Releases

Here are the latest and most interesting releases this week in the AWS World:

⭐ This week, the most interesting service release for me personally were the changes to the AWS Free Tier, which is going to really help the next generation of builders!

🔥 Tip: Check out https://aws-news.com/ for the very latest up-to-date serverless releases as they happen, created by the talented AWS Serverless Hero Luc van Donkersgoed.

👷🏻 Tools & Frameworks

Check out the latest open-source frameworks, news, and tool updates from the past week.

AWS CDK - dropped support for Node.js 14 and 16, aligning with AWS's announced end-of-support timeline.
AWS Fundamentals - additional animated diagrams (now 27) to go check out!
awdx - (AWS DevOps X) is a next-generation, human-friendly CLI tool for AWS DevSecOps. It helps you manage, automate, and secure your AWS environment with simple, interactive commands and smart suggestions.

Stay tuned for next week where there are some really cool tool announcements that I have had the pleasure of having a sneak peak of!

✖️ Social of the Week

This week’s social is by friend of the newsletter, Datadog Developer Advocate James Eastham on LinkedIn:

This is a great post from James, and there are a certainly a ton of similarities between them for sure, like modularity, contracts, composability, and clear interfaces... Almost all new frameworks or technologies are based on previous approaches in my opinion.

What are your thoughts and experiences with MCP and the varying alternatives? Feel free to leave a comment below.

🎙️ YouTube & Podcasts

Here are some of my favourite videos and podcasts this week.

⭐ My favourite video this week is by Serverless Hero Michael Walmsley on the Believe In Serverless live stream.

Mark Sailes and Philip Riecks cover ‘Testing Spring Boot Applications’ on the Java In the Cloud podcast.
The Believe In Serverless stream had Michael Walmsley discussing ‘Maximise your VIBE with Amazon Q’.
Season 4 Episode 27 of the LogiCast AWS News Podcast is out.
Dave Farley has a super interesting video called ‘My BIGGEST REGRETS From A 40 Year Software Engineering Career’.
The AWS Bites podcast covers episode 146 titled ‘The AWS Product Lifecycle page‘.
James Eastham has an Azure focused video called ‘The Smarter Way To Develop Azure Functions Locally’.
Derek Comartin has a great video about ‘Why Domain-Driven Design Feels So Complicated (And How to Fix It)’.

Weekly Case Study 🔍

This week’s case study comes from the Volkswagen Group of America.

Discover how they used Amazon Q Business to map 4,000 unique job descriptions to 3,200 global job roles, completing the project on time and even building an Amazon Q app to generate a draft solution in just one day.

🗣️ Inspirational Quotes and Thoughts

This week’s inspirational quote or thought comes from Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services”

“There is no compression algorithm for experience“
Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services

This quote is so, so true in my opinion! Over the years I have met many people who have the theoretical knowledge on subjects like serverless, architecture, and software engineering, yet don’t have the applied knowledge to build the actual experience.

There is 100% no compression algorithm as Andy said; so my unsolicited advice: go build stuff regularly and learn what works, and what doesn’t (don’t just read about it).

What are your own thoughts and experiences of this quote? Feel free to leave a comment below.

🗳️ Poll of the Week

In last week’s poll, we asked the question “Do you actively build side projects or do consultancy outside of your full-time role?”.

Interestingly, 88% said yes, and only 13% said no! That is a pretty cool statistic, and something that I am looking to do more personally too! If you are interested in working with me or collaborating, please reach out!

This week, we ask the question, “What is the ideal size for an autonomous serverless team in your opinion?”. In your opinion, what works best? Do you see a need for dedicated QA in serverless teams? At what point do teams get too big or too small?

Feel free to leave a comment below on why you chose your answer and your experiences!

📅 Serverless Events

The following serverless events are upcoming, so mark your calendars.

🎟️ To note, CFP is currently open for the AWS North Community Conference, which I am helping organise, and we also have opportunities for lightning talks throughout the day. Go check it out!

Other fantastic events happening soon:

ACD Australia - 15th August 2025
ACD Adria - 5th Sept 2025
AWS Community Day Baltic - 10th Sept 2025
ACD Aotearoa - 18th Sept 2025
ACD Poland - 18th Sept 2025
ACD Portugal - 27th Sept 2025
ACD DACH - 7th Oct 2025
AWS North Community Conference - 16th Oct 2025

Do you have any upcoming events that you want to highlight? Message me below!

⭐ Spotlight

This week’s spotlight falls on AWS Community Builder Daniele Frasca:

Daniele is an international speaker, AWS Community Builder, and active blogger, who is also a well-known name in the serverless world. Go checkout a great example of one of Daniele’s talks below where he is joined on stage with Roman Boiko discussing EventBridge Pipes with Kafka.