How to avoid using route 53 - Using a custom domain managed by GoDaddy

Today we are going to see how you can avoid one recurring charge in AWS Cloud Hosting. And go cheaper. This is how you can avoid using route 53 and still make everything perfect.

If You know how to use effectively, Amazon AWS Services can be most affordable cloud hosting service for your small business.

Following is such an effective solution for reducing hosting charges of AWS hosting.

This way, we can host our app, website on AWS without using Route 53.

And thus avoid some monthly charges.

This way you only have to pay for storage, bandwidth and deployments(if you are using git).

You may think .50 dollars per month is not much but in long term this is going to make a difference.

What we are going to do is ‘instead of using amazon route 53 as our name server/ DNS host’, we are going to ‘use CNAME and forwarding in Godaddy.com’ to point our domains to AWS host.

When we buy a domain name from godaddy, they allow as to manage our DNS server also. We are going to use this to use this default Godaddy dns servers in stead of amazon route 53.

While this tutorial is specifically for aws cloud and godaddy this will work in other similar situations with other domain name registrars and other cloud service providers like heroku & azure etc.

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Our goal

We need to to redirect all of our url versions to one chosen url.

I am using my domain sportsdeals.in as an example. This is my domain name but i am not going to renew it.

so by the time you read this someone else might own this domain. So i am using this name for experimentation.

Anyway we want all our domain name versions of this website to point to https://www.sportsdeals.in

https://sportsdeals.in http://sportsdeals.in http://www.sportsdeals.in https://www.sportsdeals.in or sportsdeals.in

Any of the above url that user types into the address bar should be redirected to https://www.sportsdeals.in.

Also, we don’t need red “unsafe website” message to appear in users browser either.

Before we start doing this, following are some more information you need to know.

Reasons to use AWS Route 53

Amazon AWS pushes for the use of route 53 aggressively. But it is actually a avery useful service and not too costly either(is you are spending in dollars). It is very easy to set up and start using it.

They have name servers in many locations and therefore it is faster and responsive than what most other companies offer.

In this case AWS route 53 have servers in my country and have more locations compared to Godaddy. So if .50 dollar a month is not much for you, it is best continue using Amazon DNS service.

While having a better DNS service is obviously an advantage on performance and even SEO, it is not much difference for a general website / blog. You are not even going to notice anyway. Because most sites uses normal dns hosting provided by hosting providers.

Reasons to not use Aws route 53

But the problem for me is that i am not from a country which uses dollar as its primary currency. There for .50 dollar is not that cheap monthly charge for me. In fact many hosting providers offer way cheaper solutions, than this.

In fact i host 5 websites on a local hosting service and total yearly cost is actually less than Yearly AWS Route 53 annual cost excluding all other charges.

But obviously AWS is better than local service provider and only thing stopping me from using AWS hosting is is Route 53 fixed extra charges.

Also route 53 is not included in free tier of 1 year.

Amazon AWS vs Godaddy - NAMESERVER Comparison

Test location - Vancouver, Canada Website used for testing - https://gtmetrix.com/

Most of my websites target audience are from India, but i am not going to test it form India because for that i need to sign up and login in GtMetrix. But default location Vancouver, Canada suffice for porpose of this test.

Amazon aws nameservers responed within - .03 seconds Godaddy nameserver responded withing - .06 seconds My local cheap hosting provided nameserver responded in - .09 seconds

Using godaddy for hosting DNS:Nameservers

There is some documentation on how to use Godaddy nameservers instead of using route 53. But it is not clear(it is kind of clear but you have to have very good technical knowledge to understand it; and it is not a step by step guide).

One of the main problem you will face is updating ANAME. If you are a regular user Godaddy won’t allow updating ANAME directly but you can use Domain forwarding.

step 1 - Create an app/website/bucket in amazon

First step is creating an app in aws. I am going to use Aws amplify and connect with github for continues deployment.

step 2 - Add new domain

After connecting with github repository, our site will become live in a test url and you get the option to add a new domain.

Add a new domain and wait for ssl certificate installation. This will happen automatically and after that you can see CNAME details to update at godaddy.

step 3 - Add CNAME records in Godaddy DNS dashboard

Go to godaddy and go to products -> dns settings.

Here if you are using a different name servers, change it to default. Changing to default settings is necessary in order to access CNAME records.

Now click on manage DNS in the bottom and go to settings. Here you can delete any existing CNAME record. and get ready to add new one.

Now create a new CName record and add first part ie host as www and point to the url copied from amazon aws.

You need to create another CNAME and this time add first part of second record you copied form AWS and point to the second part.

step 3 - Make sure no unwanted redirection is in place.

When setting up custom domain name, you automatically get option to redirect htts://sportsdeals.in to https://www.sportsdeals.in in aws.

Make sure to Not choose this redirection in aws. Because we are already redirecting root url to https://www.sportsdeals.in from Godaddy, there is no need to add an extra redirection in aws.

Now half of our job is done.

step 4 - Add redirection in Godaddy

In the same section of DNS records there is an option for forwarding. This option is located at the bottom area of page.

Create a new forwarding.

Choose https:// from the first dropdown and in the second area add www.yoursite.com in my case iam adding www.sportsdeals.in in the second area.

Choose permanent redirection 302.

step 5 - Waiting and testing time

I usually test sites using GTMETRIX / google developer Speed test to see the status of sites. Because cookies and caches are very difficult to deal with when you are testing on your local machine.

You can use either one of the mentioned service for testing different url versions. You can see which urls redirect to where when using page speed test by google. And if you use GTMetrix, you can see more details on responce time and load time etc.

I recommend you test using both of these sites.

If everything is working fine, Good job. It is time for a coffee.

Conclusion : You can easily save few bucks using default Godaddy nameservers instead of route 53 by amazon AWS. But you have to sacrifice around .03 second response time for this. You are ok with that just use Godaddy nameservers and you are good to go.