AWS SNS workaround for 100,000 topics limit

Question

I am developing an architecture for push notifications using AWS SNS with APNS and GCM. The model that I am following is

• Each user (not device) will have an SNS topic corresponding to it
• Each user can have multiple devices
• Create an platform application endpoint for each device
• Subscribe the platform application endpoint to the topic belonging to the device's user

This way, when we have to send a notification to all the devices of a user, we need to call the publish method using the user's topicArn and all its devices should get the message.

However, by default AWS has a limit of 100,000 topics. If we are anticipating higher number of users like 1 million or say 10 million to be optimistic, is there any workaround for this approach?

Should I ask AWS to raise the limit beforehand? Do they raise limit to a number like 100 million easily? Is there any cost implication of most of them are not used in the beginning few months?

Answer 1

disclosure: I used to work on Amazon SNS

The architecture you propose is a common pattern within Amazon SNS and is sound.

You should ask for a topic limit increase. There is no cost implication for having a higher topic limit, even if you create the topics and don't use them. However, you will pay $0.50/million requests for each CreateTopic call, with the first 1 million requests being free per month.

When you submit the support ticket, please document your use case. It helps the team expedite your limit increase request.