‹ Return to Getting started

Related Articles

What is Amazon Lightsail?

Last updated: March 23, 2018

Amazon Lightsail is the easiest way to get started with AWS if you just need virtual private servers. Lightsail includes everything you need to launch your project quickly – a virtual machine, SSD-based storage, data transfer, DNS management, and a static IP – for a low, predictable price. After you create your instance, you can easily connect to it. You can manage your instances using the Lightsail console, Lightsail API, or Lightsail command line interface (CLI).

Who is Lightsail for?

Lightsail is for developers. You can choose an image for your Lightsail instance that jumpstarts your dev project so you don't have to spend as much time installing software or frameworks.

If you're an individual developer or hobbyist working on a personal project, Lightsail can help you deploy and manage basic cloud resources. You might also be interested in learning or experimenting with cloud services, such as virtual machines or networking. Lightsail provides a quick way to get started.

Lightsail has images with base operating systems, development stacks like LAMP, LEMP (Nginx), and SQL Server Express, and applications like WordPress, Drupal, and Magento. For more detailed information about the software installed on each image, see Choose a Lightsail instance image.

As your project grows, you can add block storage disks and attach them to your Lightsail instance. You can take snapshots of these instances and disks and easily create new instances from those snapshots. You can also peer your VPC so that your Lightsail instances can use other AWS resources outside of Lightsail.

You can also create a Lightsail load balancer and attach target instances to create a highly available application. You can also configure your load balancer to handle encrypted (HTTPS) traffic, session persistence, health checking, and more.

Operating systems in Lightsail

    Linux

  • Amazon Linux 2017

  • CentOS 7

  • Ubuntu Server 16 and 18

  • Free BSD 10

  • Debian 8 and 9

  • openSUSE Leap

    Windows

  • Windows Server 2016

  • Windows Server 2012 R2

CMS applications in Lightsail

    Linux

  • WordPress powered by Bitnami

  • WordPress Multisite powered by Bitnami

  • Drupal powered by Bitnami

  • Joomla powered by Bitnami

E-commerce and project management applications in Lightsail

    Linux

  • Magento powered by Bitnami (eCommerce)

  • Redmine (Project Management)

Development stacks in Lightsail

    Linux

  • LAMP stack (PHP 5 and PHP 7) powered by Bitnami

  • Node.js powered by Bitnami

  • MEAN Stack powered by Bitnami (HVM)

  • LEMP Stack (Nginx) by Bitnami

  • GitLab powered by Bitnami (HVM)

  • Plesk Hosting Stack on Ubuntu

    Windows

  • SQL Server 2016 Express

Get started now

You can do any of the following to get going: