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I Deployed a Website on Amazon S3 Without Managing a Server

I Deployed a Website on Amazon S3 Without Managing a Server

When learning AWS, we often start with EC2, but not every website needs a virtual machine.

Panchal Dhairya

Volunteer @aws user group ahmedabad | AWSome
For a simple static website, Amazon S3 can host your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files without requiring you to manage a server.
Let’s try it practically.

🛠️ What You’ll Need

  • An AWS account
  • A basic index.html file
  • Access to the Amazon S3 console

🚀 Step-by-Step Implementation

Step 1: Create an S3 bucket
Open the AWS Management Console, navigate to Amazon S3, and create a bucket with a globally unique name.
Step 2: Upload your website
Create a simple index.html file:
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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>My First AWS Website</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello, AWS!</h1>
<p>My first website hosted on Amazon S3.</p>
</body>
</html>
Upload this file to your bucket.
Step 3: Enable static website hosting
Open your bucket's Properties tab, find Static website hosting, enable it, and set index.html as the index document.
Step 4: Access your website
Use the website endpoint provided by S3 to test your deployment.
Remember that S3 website endpoints require appropriate public-read access for a publicly accessible site. For production workloads, consider using Amazon CloudFront with restricted access to the S3 origin instead.

💡 What Did I Learn?

This small experiment helped me understand that choosing the right AWS service matters more than simply launching a server.
Amazon S3 is useful for static website hosting, while EC2 is better suited to workloads that need a running server or operating-system-level control.
My takeaway: Before choosing an AWS service, ask yourself whether you actually need a server.

🎯 Try It Yourself

Deploy a personal portfolio or a simple landing page using Amazon S3. Then explore how Amazon CloudFront can improve content delivery.
What would you choose for a static website: Amazon S3 or Amazon EC2? Share your thoughts!
# amazon-s3# website# self-hosted# aws-builders# web-development
Any opinions in this article are those of the individual author and may not reflect the opinions of AWS.
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