Setting up domain and email addresses using AWS

Question

I have recently got a chance to get access to Amazon Web Services, but I'm really lost..

1. I have set up a domain example.com on AWS, but I don't know what to do with it. I currently have a simple website built with Weebly.. Is there any way to link this with example.com? (e.g. forwarding users to the Weebly website when they enter example.com as the URL) I found a blog post about building a static website using S3 and Route53. Would this be a more efficient option?

2. How can I set up email accounts and email routings with the domain example.com? (e.g. forwarding emails to [email protected] when email is received into [email protected])

Both tasks seemed simple at first, so I tried to research the procedures, but it was difficult to find a step by step tutorials on accomplishing those specific tasks. (maybe because it's too simple? Or because it's not as simple as I thought?)

Your expertise and guidance is greatly appreciated. Please help!

Answer 1

1. So you have purchased a new domain abc.com and have already set it up in Route53. Good. Now you want to point this domain to your other website xyz.com. So, you will go to Route53 console, and will create a CNAME record to point abc.com to xyz.com. What this CNAME record will do is create an alias for xyz.com. The Route53 console is self explanatory. If you will feel confused, just ping me here and ask specific doubts.

2. To set up your email server with your own domain e.g. [email protected], you have to think what product you want to choose. There is Amazon workmail, Gmail for business, Office 365, etc. Each of these service will charge you. E.g. Amazon workmail charges you $4 per month, per user. Similarly gmail charges you $5. They will also give you additional benefits such as calendars, chat applications, etc. Once you have set this up, you can send and receive emails normally like you do in gmail.

If you would like to send bulk emails using an API, that is where Amazon SES comes in. This service will allow your already created email address to send thousands of email to your customers. It also serves other purposes such as creating a filter list of users, bouncing back messages that are not delivered, scanning for viruses, etc.

Answer 2

Q1 is simple enough. But the problem is, if you built your website by Weebly, as they don't allow FTP access, you can't get your website file out of Weebly. Then you can't put your website on S3. So the answer is, you can either stay with Weebly, or you have to build a new website without using online website building services like Weebly.

Be noticed that you can only host a static website on S3, which means no database, PHP etc is allowed.

For Q2, you misunderstood Amazon Web Services. They provide email sending service called SES (for companies which send 100,000 emails per day with cheap price), but they don't provide any email inbox. This fact bothered me and finally I solve the mailbox problem by setting up email forwarding on Godaddy, so that all incoming email of my domains could be forwarded to my personal email account. But if you registered your domain by Weebly, they provide email inbox service didn't they?