[jcims]

Kafka and SNS only conceptually intersect, SNS is more for intra-service and endpoint notification at huge scale (millions of subscribers) and is directly integrated into a variety of AWS services (e.g. S3 event notifications). You can set up a topic, subscribe a customer via SMS and send a message in just a few lines of python:

    $ python3
    >>> import boto3
    >>> sns=boto3.client('sns')
    >>> sns.create_topic(Name='DopeService')
    >>> sns.subscribe(TopicArn='arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:xxxxxxxxxxxx:DopeService',Protocol='sms',Endpoint='[phone]')
    >>> ...<repeat for other SMS #'s>...
    >>> sns.publish(TopicArn='arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:xxxxxxxxxxxx:DopeService',Message='sup')

If you're a masochist you can have Amazon notify everyone on the topic every time someone uploads to your bucket

    >>> sns.set_topic_attributes(TopicArn='arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:xxxxxxxxxxxx:DopeService',AttributeName='Policy',AttributeValue='<policy>')
    >>> s3.put_bucket_notification_configuration(Bucket='dopebucket',NotificationConfiguration={<notification config>})

You send directly to HTTP/HTTPS service endpoints, other SNS topics, Lambdas, SQS queues and mobile app push notifications. SNS is more about signaling than a raw message pipe. Relative to Kafka it's basically apples and oranges.