Amazon S3 Ultimate Guide: Host Your Static Website in Minutes!

In this article, we will discuss the benefits and the advantages of How to host a static website on Amazon S3. In today’s era, every business needs a good and reliable website. In this internet era, it has become even easier to reach the customer through a website, whether it is a small shop or an e-commerce business or a hospital, or anything else; everyone needs a good website.

If we talk about hosting, then there are many hosting platforms available in the market, like GoDaddy. But today we are going to tell you how you can host your website on a service S3 bucket of the AWS cloud. Anyone who wants to create a reliable static website can do this. AWS cloud gives you all the features that anyone else can give you, and that too at a lower cost.

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is not only used for storing data, but also for hosting static websites. If you have HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files and want to serve them as a website, S3 provides a simple and scalable solution.

Benefits of hosting a static website on Amazon S3

Cost-effective: In this, you will have to pay only for data storage and data transfer. If your website has static pages and there is less traffic, then this is a better option for you.

Highly Available and Durable: S3 provides 99.999999999% (11 9s) durability and 99.99% availability. Your content is stored across multiple AZs (Availability Zones).

Fast and Scalable: You can also put the CDN on your website so that your website can work 24/7 with low latency globally.

Secure Access Control: Supports bucket policies and IAM for controlled access, and it will support HTTPS via CloudFront for secure browsing. You can make your content public and also restrict it to specific users.

Simple Setup & Maintenance: You do not need any EC2 instance for this; you just need to upload your static files (HTML, CSS, JS). You can host content directly or automate deployments via CI/CD tools like GitHub Actions or Jenkins, or AWS developer tools.

Custom Domain and SSL Support: You can also configure your website’s custom domain with the help of AWS Route 53 or any other DNS provider. Easily integrate with AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) and AWS CloudFront to provide free SSL certificates.

Versioning and Backups: The S3 bucket also supports the version system, so you can easily roll back to the previous version of your website. It will be very helpful for safe updates and debugging the issues. Ideal for the static single-page website or any informational website.

Setup of a Static website on AWS S3

Prerequisites:

AWS Account
Basic knowledge of the AWS Console
Website files (HTML/CSS/JS)

Step 1: Create an S3 Bucket

Sign in to your AWS Console. https://signin.aws.amazon.com/signup?request_type=register
Navigate to the S3 service.
Click on Create bucket.
Set a unique bucket name (match your custom domain name if you plan to use one).
Choose a region.
Uncheck “Block all public access”.
Acknowledge the warning and click Create bucket.

Step 2: Upload Website Files

Open your newly created bucket.
Click on Upload.
Add your index.html, styles.css, and other files.
Click Upload.

Step 3: Enable Static Website Hosting

Go to the Properties tab.
Scroll to Static website hosting and click Edit.
Enable the feature.

Set the following:

Index document: index.html
Error document: error.html (optional)
Click Save changes.

Step 4: Set Bucket Policy to Allow Public Access

Navigate to the Permissions tab.
Under the Bucket policy, click Edit.
Paste the following policy (replace your-bucket-name):

Click Save changes.

Step 5: Access Your Website

Go to the Properties tab.
Scroll down to Static website hosting.
Copy the Website endpoint URL.
Open it in your browser — your website is live!

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Optional: Use a Custom Domain

To map your custom domain, your S3 bucket name must exactly match your domain name. You can use Amazon Route 53 or your domain registrar to create DNS records. Optionally, you can also use CloudFront for HTTPS support and better performance

Conclusion:

AWS S3 provides you with all the features to host a more reliable website at a low cost. It eliminates the entire process of website hosting, such as server, DNS, and everything else, and gives you an easy way to host your website. Whether it’s a personal portfolio or documentation site, S3 is an excellent solution.