AWS Free Tier Web Hosting: Powerful Features with No Upfront Cost

Introduction

If you’re looking to launch a website without incurring upfront hosting costs, AWS Free Tier provides a fantastic opportunity to get started. AWS (Amazon Web Services) offers a robust suite of cloud services, and with its Free Tier, you can access many of these services for free — ideal for small businesses, personal projects, or developers looking to test out AWS’s capabilities.

In this blog, we’ll dive into how you can use AWS Free Tier for web hosting, exploring the services available, how to set up your hosting environment, and why AWS is a great choice for building scalable websites at no initial cost.

What is AWS Free Tier?

AWS Free Tier is a program designed to allow new users to explore and experiment with AWS services for free, within certain usage limits. It includes three types of offers:

Always Free: These services are free for as long as you use them, as long as you stay within the usage limits.
12-Month Free: New AWS customers receive free usage of select services for 12 months after signing up.
Trials: Some services are free for a limited time, typically 30 or 60 days.

For web hosting, the most relevant offerings are from the Always Free and 12-Month Free categories, including services like EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), S3 (Simple Storage Service), and CloudFront.

Why Choose AWS Free Tier for Web Hosting?

AWS is known for its scalability, flexibility, and reliability. Here are some key reasons why you should consider AWS Free Tier for web hosting:

No Upfront Cost: You can start hosting your website on AWS without paying anything up front. AWS provides the necessary resources under the Free Tier with minimal usage charges.
Scalability: As your website grows, AWS makes it easy to scale your resources up or down to meet your needs without worrying about infrastructure management.
Security and Compliance: AWS offers strong security measures and compliance certifications that can help ensure your website is safe and meets industry standards.
Comprehensive Services: AWS provides a full range of tools to host a website, from computing resources (EC2) to storage solutions (S3), databases (RDS), and content delivery networks (CloudFront).

Key AWS Free Tier Services for Web Hosting

Let’s take a look at the main services in the AWS Free Tier that you can leverage for hosting your website.

Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)
EC2 lets you run virtual machines (instances) on the cloud. The Free Tier includes 750 hours per month of t2.micro instances for the first 12 months. This is enough to run a lightweight website, blog, or web application.
- How to Use EC2 for Web Hosting:
  - Launch a t2.micro EC2 instance (which is free under the Free Tier).
  - Install a web server (like Apache or Nginx) and upload your website files.
  - Configure security groups to allow web traffic (HTTP/HTTPS).
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
S3 is an object storage service that allows you to store and serve static website files, such as HTML, CSS, images, and JavaScript. The Free Tier provides 5GB of standard storage, 20,000 GET requests, and 2,000 PUT requests per month.
- How to Use S3 for Hosting Static Websites:
  - Create a bucket in S3 and upload your static website files.
  - Enable static website hosting on your bucket.
  - Link your S3 bucket to a domain name or use the AWS-provided URL for your website.
Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service)
If your website requires a relational database, AWS RDS offers 750 hours of db.t2.micro instances with 20GB of storage each month for free. You can choose from database engines like MySQL, PostgreSQL, or MariaDB.
- How to Use RDS for Database Hosting:
  - Launch an RDS instance with your desired database engine.
  - Configure your application to connect to the RDS instance for storing and retrieving data.
Amazon CloudFront (Content Delivery Network)
CloudFront helps speed up the delivery of your website content by caching and distributing it across a global network of edge locations. The Free Tier offers 50GB of data transfer out and 2,000,000 HTTP/HTTPS requests per month.
- How to Use CloudFront for Faster Content Delivery:
  - Set up a CloudFront distribution to serve content from your S3 bucket or EC2 instance.
  - Configure caching settings to improve site speed and reduce latency.

How to Set Up Web Hosting on AWS Free Tier

Here’s a simple, step-by-step guide to setting up a basic website on AWS Free Tier:

Create an AWS Account
- Sign up for an AWS account if you don’t have one already. You will need to provide billing information, but as long as you stay within Free Tier limits, you won’t incur charges.
Launch an EC2 Instance
- Go to the EC2 dashboard in the AWS Management Console.
- Click Launch Instance and choose the Amazon Linux 2 AMI (free tier eligible).
- Select t2.micro as the instance type.
- Configure security settings to allow inbound HTTP (port 80) and HTTPS (port 443) traffic.
- Launch the instance and connect via SSH.
Install a Web Server on EC2
- Connect to your EC2 instance via SSH and install Apache or Nginx: sudo yum install httpd sudo service httpd start
- Upload your website files (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) to the EC2 instance.
Set Up an S3 Bucket for Static Content (Optional)
- Go to the S3 console and create a new bucket.
- Enable static website hosting and upload static assets (e.g., images, CSS files).
- Link this to your EC2-hosted website for faster loading times.
Configure a Domain (Optional)
- If you have a custom domain, use Amazon Route 53 to configure DNS settings to point to your EC2 instance or CloudFront distribution.

Conclusion

AWS Free Tier offers an excellent way to get started with web hosting without any upfront costs. Whether you’re hosting a simple static website or a more complex dynamic application, AWS provides powerful tools to support your website’s growth, all while keeping costs manageable.

By using AWS Free Tier services like EC2, S3, RDS, and CloudFront, you can build a scalable, secure, and fast website with no initial investment. As your website grows, AWS gives you the flexibility to scale your infrastructure seamlessly, ensuring that you can handle increased traffic and resource demands.

Ready to launch your website on AWS? The Free Tier gives you the perfect environment to experiment, learn, and deploy — all for free.