The Complete Guide to Hosting Web Applications on AWS Cloud

Here’s a detailed breakdown of AWS web hosting options, their use cases, estimated pricing and key benefits:

• Description: Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) can host static websites with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and media files. It doesn’t support dynamic server side processing but can be paired with AWS Lambda or API Gateway for dynamic functionality.

• Best for: Simple websites, personal blogs, landing pages, documentation sites.

• Pricing:

• Storage: ~$0.023 per GB (first 50TB per month).

• Data transfer out: ~$0.09 per GB (first 10TB).

• Key Benefits:

• Highly scalable and durable (99.99% availability).

• Integrated with CloudFront for fast content delivery.

• Low maintenance with pay as you go pricing.

   

• Description: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) provides virtual servers (instances) with full control over the hosting environment. It allows installing any software, configuring security settings and scaling up/down as needed.

• Best for: Hosting dynamic websites, custom applications, APIs and microservices.

• Pricing:

• On-Demand Instances: Starts at ~$3.50/month (t4g.nano).

• Reserved Instances: Up to 72% discount for long-term commitments.

• Spot Instances: Up to 90% discount for short term workloads.

• Key Benefits:

• Full flexibility to configure OS, web server and security.

• Wide range of instance types for different workloads.

• Can integrate with other AWS services like RDS and ELB.

   

• Description: AWS Lambda allows running code in response to events without provisioning or managing servers. It supports backend logic execution for websites and APIs with pay per use pricing.

• Best for: Lightweight web apps, APIs, automation scripts and event-driven applications.

• Pricing:

• Free tier: 1 million requests + 400,000 GB-seconds per month.

• After the free tier: ~$0.20 per 1M requests + ~$0.00001667 per GB-second.

• Key Benefits:

• No need to manage infrastructure.

• Scales automatically with demand.

• Cost-effective for sporadic workloads.

   

• Description: Amazon Lightsail is a simplified VPS service with pre-configured computing, storage and networking. It’s ideal for users who need an easy to manage cloud instance without the complexity of EC2.

• Best for: Small websites, personal blogs, WordPress hosting and small business applications.

• Pricing:

• Starts at $3.50/month (512MB RAM, 20GB SSD, 1TB data transfer).

• Higher plans are available up to $160/month.

• Key Benefits:

• Easy setup with pre configured stacks (WordPress, LAMP, etc.).

• Fixed pricing with predictable billing.

• Managed database and networking options.

   

• Description: Elastic Beanstalk is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that automatically manages web applications. Developers just deploy their code, and AWS handles infrastructure, scaling and monitoring.

• Best for: Developers who want to deploy apps quickly without managing servers.

• Pricing:

• Charges for underlying AWS resources (EC2, RDS, etc.).

• A typical setup with a small EC2 instance costs $15–$50/month.

• Key Benefits:

• Automatic scaling and monitoring.

• Supports multiple languages (Node.js, Python, Java, PHP, etc.).

• Zero infrastructure management.

   

• Description: CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that caches website content at edge locations worldwide, improving site speed and reducing latency.

• Best for: High traffic websites, media streaming, gaming applications, software downloads.

• Pricing:

• Free tier: 1TB/month for the first year.

• Standard pricing: Starts at $0.085/GB (first 10TB per month).

• Key Benefits:

• Global content distribution for fast performance.

• DDoS protection with AWS Shield.

• Reduces origin server load.

   

• Description: AWS Amplify provides a fully managed service for hosting modern web applications, including JAMstack (React, Vue, Angular). It also integrates with backend services like authentication and GraphQL APIs.

• Best for: Startups, and developers building full stack serverless applications.

• Pricing:

• Free tier: 5GB storage + 15GB bandwidth/month.

• Storage: $0.023/GB.

• Bandwidth: $0.15/GB after the free tier.

• Key Benefits:

• Easy Git-based deployments (GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab).

• Built-in CI/CD pipeline.

• Supports backend services (Auth, APIs, Storage).

   

• Description: Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) hosts databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB in a fully managed environment. It provides automated backups, scaling and security.

• Best for: Database driven websites (WordPress, Joomla, e-commerce platforms).

• Pricing:

• Small RDS instance: ~$15/month.

• Larger deployments scale up to thousands per month.

• Key Benefits:

• Fully managed database administration.

• Automated scaling and backups.

• Supports high availability with Multi-AZ.

   

• For static websites: Amazon S3, CloudFront
• For simple server hosting: Lightsail, EC2
• For scalable web applications: Elastic Beanstalk, EC2, Lambda
• For full-stack serverless: AWS Amplify, Lambda
• For high-speed content delivery: CloudFront
• For database-driven applications: Amazon RDS

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