In LAB: AWS Domain Registration & Web Hosting, I used Route 53 to manage my domain’s DNS records. Due to cost associated with Route 53 hosted zone services, I have decided to utilize Lightsail DNS zone included in the monthly plan.

Route 53 Hosted Zone Pricing

• $0.50 per hosted zone / month for the first 25 hosted zones
• $0.10 per hosted zone / month for additional hosted zones

Lightsail DNS Management Pricing

• DNS management is free within Lightsail
• You can create up to 3 DNS zones and as many records as you want for each DNS zone
• You also get a monthly allowance of 3 million DNS queries per month to your zones. Beyond your first 3 million queries in a month, you are charged $0.40 USD/million DNS queries.

Build

• Step 1: LAB: AWS Domain Registration & Web Hosting (Previous completed lab pointing to Route 53 for domain’s DNS records)
• Step 2: Create a DNS zone in the Lightsail console (This is where I actually start)
• Step 3: Add records to the DNS zone
• Step 4: Change the name servers at your domain’s current DNS hosting provider (If your domain like mine was registered using Amazon Route 53, follow Adding or changing name servers or glue records)

Note: By default, DNS resolvers typically cache the names of name servers for two days. As a result, your changes can take two days to take effect. 

Cleanup

Using the Route 53 console to delete a public hosted zone

Important: If web traffic is currently being routed to your domain, make sure that all of the existing DNS records are present in the Lightsail DNS zone before changing the name servers at your domain’s current DNS hosting provider. This way, traffic continually flows uninterrupted after the transfer to the Lightsail DNS zone.