InclusiveGuide AWS Migration & Re-Imaging the platform

Overview: 

InclusiveGuide helps users find places that support inclusiveness and diversity. This platform is an enhanced version of Yelp, with a vision to celebrate and support diverse groups of customers. As part of the AWS Impact Accelerator Women Founders Cohort, InclusiveGuide realized the potential of AWS and decided to migrate from DigitalOcean to the AWS cloud.

Highlights:

• Increased security and data protection guardrails
• 10X improvement in platform usability
• 60% reduction in infrastructure costs
• Automated deployments enabling faster feature delivery

Opportunity: 

On DigitalOcean, InclusiveGuide faced continuous server costs regardless of usage, and reliance on self-hosted databases like MongoDB posed risks of availability and data loss issues. The lack of auto-scaling and automated deployments led to inefficiencies and higher costs. The migration to AWS presented an opportunity to adopt serverless architecture and utilize core services like AWS Cognito, DocumentDB, and CodePipeline, enhancing scalability, reliability, and availability while significantly reducing costs.

Solution:

 In 2023, InclusiveGuide partnered with Cruxito Tech Solutions to address long-standing tech challenges, revamp customer experience, and support AWS migration. As InclusiveGuide was in a growth stage, acquiring both end customers and business clients, a serverless architecture leveraging AWS Lambda and API Gateway was crucial for meeting current and future needs.

Migrating user authentication to AWS Cognito improved security standards. Given the platform’s data sensitivity, additional measures were implemented to ensure robust security guardrails, including AWS WAF, data encryption, and best practices for VPC, Subnet, and Security Group configurations. The new architecture adhered to AWS Well-Architected principles, emphasizing scalability, reliability, and availability. Other services like CodePipeline for automated deployments and CloudWatch for monitoring service health were integrated into the architecture.

Architecture:

 

Outcome: 

The re-architecture yielded significant benefits for InclusiveGuide:

• Increased security guardrails and data protection
• Monthly infrastructure costs reduced by 60%
• Automated deployments enhanced feature delivery pace
• Service availability exceeded 99.9% with multi-region and blue-green deployments

“Knowing the customer data is protected, the platform is always available, and highly usable gives us peace of mind to focus on business growth,” says Crystal Egli, co-founder of InclusiveGuide.

AWS Services Used:

These are the primary services that power inclusive guide platforms. 

• AWS Lambda
• AWS API Gateway
• AWS CloudFormation
• AWS Amplify
• AWS Cognito
• AWS CloudWatch
• AWS DocumentDB

Testimonial: 

“Leveraging core AWS services such as AWS Lambda, API Gateway, and Cognito has helped us build a safe and reliable platform. AWS is key to our innovation, and working with tech partners like Cruxito Tech Solutions, who truly understand the technology, allows us to build the company with utmost confidence.”

— Crystal Egli, Co-founder of InclusiveGuide

About InclusiveGuide:

InclusiveGuide helps users find places that support inclusiveness and diversity. This platform is an enhanced version of Yelp, with a vision to celebrate and support diverse groups of customers.

Meet the Founders: