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Using Amazon Route 53 to point a domain to an Amazon Lightsail instance

Last updated: November 1, 2022

The DNS zone in Amazon Lightsail makes it easy to point a registered domain name, like example.com, to your website running on a Lightsail instance. You can create up to six Lightsail DNS zones, and not all DNS record types are supported. For more information about Lightsail DNS zones, see DNS in Amazon Lightsail.

If the Lightsail DNS zone is too limited for you, then we recommend using an Amazon Route 53 hosted zone to manage your domain’s DNS records. You can manage the DNS for up to 500 domains using Route 53, and it supports a greater variety of DNS record types. Or, you might already be using Route 53 to manage your domain’s DNS records and prefer to continue using it. This guide shows you how to edit the DNS records for a domain managed in Route 53 to point to your Lightsail instance.

Prerequisites

Complete the following prerequisites if you haven’t already done so:

Pointing a domain to a Lightsail instance using Route 53

Complete the following steps to configure the two most common DNS records, address and canonical name, in Route 53 to point your domain to a Lightsail instance.

Note

This procedure is also documented in the Route 53 Developer Guide. For more information, see Creating Records by Using the Amazon Route 53 Console in the Route 53 documentation.

  1. Sign in to the Route 53 console.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Hosted zones.

  3. Choose the hosted zone for the domain name that you want to use to route traffic to your load balancer.

  4. Choose Create record.

    The Quick create record page appears.

    Create a record in Route 53 to point an alias to your Lightsail load balancer

    Note

    If you see the Choose routing policy page, then choose Switch to quick create to switch to the quick create wizard before continuing with the following steps.

  5. For Record type, choose one of the following options:

    A - Routes traffic to an IPv4 address and some AWS resources

  6. An address (A) record maps a domain, such as example.com, or a subdomain, such as blog.example.com, to a web server’s IP address, such as 192.0.2.255.

    1. Keep the Record name text box empty to point the apex of your domain, such as example.com, to an IP address, or enter a subdomain.

    2. Choose A - Routes traffic to an IPv4 address and some AWS resources in the Record type drop-down menu.

    3. Enter the static IP address (public IP address) of your Lightsail instance in the Value text box.

    4. Keep the TTL of 300, and the routing policy as Simple routing.

      Address record example in a Route 53 hosted zone.

    7. CNAME - Routes traffic to another domain name and to some AWS resources

  7. A canonical name (CNAME) record maps an alias or subdomain, such as www.example.com, to a domain, such as example.com, or a subdomain, such as www2.example.com. A CNAME record redirects one domain to another.

    1. Enter a subdomain in the Record name text box.

    2. Choose CNAME - Routes traffic to another domain name and to some AWS resources in the Record type drop-down menu.

    3. Enter a domain (i.e., example.com) or subdomain (i.e., another.example.com) in the Value text box.

    4. Keep the TTL of 300, and the routing policy as Simple routing.

      Canonical name record example in a Route 53 hosted zone.

  8. Choose Create records to add the record to your hosted zone.

    Note

    Allow time for the change to propagate through the internet's DNS. This may take a few minutes to several hours.

    To edit an existing record set in the Route 53 hosted zone, choose the record to edit, enter your changes, and then choose Save.