Everything You Need to Know About Amazon IVS in 2025

These days, where live streaming has become a popular way to connect and interact with audiences, Amazon IVS has become a boon for streamers.

The world of live streaming changed in 2020 with the launch of Amazon Interactive Video Service (IVS), which made live streaming simpler, more scalable, and more interactive.

What is Amazon IVS?

Amazon Interactive Video Service is a managed live streaming solution for content creators and video publishers to engage their audiences through live video at a high-quality and low-latency rate. It is built on AWS cloud infrastructure and provides tools required for creating interactive and engaging live video experiences.

This managed solution lets you integrate live video channels into your own independent iOS, Android, or any other web application platform. Hence, you don’t have to rely on any third-party platforms for streaming live; instead, you can stream live videos through your app or website.

Features of Amazon IVS

Amazon IVS simplifies the complexities of live video streaming. It provides a set of features that handle encoding, video delivery, and interactivity that allow users to focus on creating and delivering content rather than managing the technical aspects.

Backend and frontend of IVS are highly optimized. This offers the easiest live streaming account setup, deployment, and monitoring experience to users of all kinds, regardless of their technical expertise.

Scalability

Scalability is the ability of a system to handle an increasing amount of work without compromising performance. AWS IVS automatically adjusts its resources to handle an increase in the number of viewers. Regardless of the number of viewers attending the livestream, IVS scales up its infrastructure to ensure smooth and uninterrupted streaming.

SDK

Amazon IVS has different kinds of SDKs, or Software Development Kits, suitable for both Android and iOS. These SDKs offer the easiest integration of Amazon Interactive Video Service functionalities into any application for various platforms.

SDKs help you to easily create and manage live streaming channels and give websites and apps permission to access device’s cameras, microphones, screen sources, and custom audio and video sources.

Low Latency

Latency is the delay between an event being recorded and the time when it becomes live to your audience. High latency is one of the biggest challenges faced by live streamers across the world. 

Amazon IVS has two main live streaming options:

• Low-Latency Streaming
• Real-Time Streaming

The difference between the two types of latency options offered by Amazon Interactive Video Service is described below:

Adaptive Bitrate Streaming

IVS also offers Adaptive Bitrate Streaming (ABR). This means that based on the viewer’s internet connection and device capabilities, Amazon Interactive Video Service, or IVS, delivers the highest quality possible that the viewer’s bandwidth can support.

Stream Chat

Amazon IVS is an interactive video service because it goes beyond just live or real-time streaming. It lets you include polls, live surveys, leaderboards, chats, and other real-time elements in live streams that your viewers can respond to. This makes them feel like active participants in the stream instead of being just passive consumers. 

Live Stream Recording

Amazon Interactive Video Service offers you the convenience of configuring Amazon S3 with your live streams. This means that the videos you stream live can be saved and later used as Video on Demand (VOD). For content creators, this is an exceptionally crucial function. It helps them maximize the value of their live content by repurposing it for later use. 

Collaborative Streaming with Multiple Hosts

This feature of IVS allows multiple members to stream simultaneously. Audience members from a live stream can also join, with audio and video during broadcast.

This streaming solution lets you build a “stage” where either audience members or other hosts can stream in real time, making your stream more interactive and collaborative. This feature is useful in online classes, podcasts, panel discussions, and many other streams.

Analytics and Monitoring

IVS APIs and Amazon CloudWatch can help you monitor and track the metrics of live streams. You can monitor your stream in real time, where you can observe metrics such as view count, ingestion output bitrate, etc. 

The other kind of analytics that AWS IVS provides is historical data, where Amazon CloudWatch processes data from IVS into real-time metrics. This data is saved for up to 15 months. Analytics are crucial in helping creators assess and evaluate their performance and make informed decisions regarding live streaming strategies. 

Pay-as-you-go Pricing

All Amazon Web Services offer pay-as-you-go pricing models. This means you pay only for the features you use and how much you use them. IVS also gives you pay-as-you-go pricing, making it extremely cost-effective for all kinds of live video streaming, unlike other streaming providers who work on pre-paid models.

Benefits of using Amazon IVS

With enormous features, IVS offers the user several benefits, making it groundbreaking. A few of the noteworthy benefits are:

• Ease of use: Amazon IVS offers a user-friendly interface where all the technicality is handled at the backend, providing users with a seamless experience while streaming and hosting.
• Customization: With the availability of a lot of features and options, a stream can be customized as per user need and the nature of the stream, giving them full access to how the stream will be visible to the viewers.
• Global reach: IVS uses AWS’s high-performance CDN (Content Delivery Network) to ensure that viewers can enjoy consistent and smooth streaming regardless of their location.
• Cost efficiency: AWS IVS Pricing is flexible and offers a usage-based pricing model where you have to pay just for the services you used.

Applications of Amazon IVS

Amazon Interactive Video Service (IVS) is a boon for live video streaming. It has become an important tool for many different businesses due to its low latency, high-quality streaming, and strong functionality. The potential and flexibility of Amazon IVS attract several applications, some of which include:

• Live Game Streaming: It provides an excellent platform for game streaming, offering various features like live chat and polls. Thus, it becomes easier to interact with other gamers and users.
• E-Commerce and Live Shopping Events: This enables live shopping, which is another popular trend nowadays, where customers can directly buy the products demonstrated to them in the stream.
• Online Education and Remote Learning: With technology everywhere, remote education has also evolved. AWS IVS provides a platform to ease online learning, providing an in-person classroom experience.

Conclusion

Amazon IVS is a bane for digital content creators who want to stream their content flawlessly. It makes broadcasting easier and helps to create more engagement with low latency and high resolutions. Moreover, the payment model of AWS IVS makes it super affordable and a top choice for all content creators and businesses who want to elevate their business to the next level.