🚀 Affordable Initial Business Website Deployment on AWS

When a business is just starting out, cost matters more than complexity. You don’t need Kubernetes, Auto Scaling Groups, or managed everything on day one — you need something secure, maintainable, and cheap that can grow later.

This is the simplest architecture I recommend for an initial business website, built entirely in an AWS environment 👇

🌐 Domain & DNS

- Domain purchased from GoDaddy (or any registrar)

- AWS Route 53 for DNS management

- Clean separation: registrar ≠ DNS

- Easy to migrate later if needed

🗄️ Database Server (Free Tier)

- EC2 t2.micro (~10GB)

- PostgreSQL / MySQL

- Private network access only (no public exposure)

- Automated backups (snapshots + logical dumps to S3)

- At this stage, self-managed DB is cheaper than RDS and fully sufficient.

🧩 Application Server (Free Tier)

- EC2 t2.micro (~20GB)

- Nginx + Certbot (TLS termination)

- Application running in Docker

- Promtail + Loki + Grafana for lightweight log monitoring

- Public-facing entry point for users

- Nginx handles SSL, Docker keeps deployments clean, and observability is added without heavy cost.

🔁 CI/CD Server (On-Demand Only)

- EC2 t3.small

- Nginx & Certbot (secured Jenkins access)

- Jenkins for CI/CD

- Git, Docker, Docker Compose

- Started only during deployments, stopped afterward

This is the biggest cost saver. CI/CD does not need to run 24/7.

🔄 Deployment Flow

- Developer commits code to Git

- Jenkins builds artifact & Docker image

- Jenkins deploys to App Server via SSH

- Docker Compose restarts the application

Simple. Predictable. No magic.

💰 Cost Optimization Highlights

- Stay within AWS Free Tier as long as possible

- Stop CI/CD server when idle

- Use Security Groups instead of complex firewalls

- Snapshot + S3 backups instead of expensive DB services

📈 How this grows later

- When traffic and revenue increase:

- Move DB to RDS

- Add Load Balancer

- Introduce Auto Scaling

- Add WAF & CDN

But only when the business justifies it.

💡 Architecture should serve the business stage, not the ego.

Start simple. Secure the basics. Scale with confidence.

If you’re building an MVP or advising early-stage teams, feel free to reuse or adapt this blueprint.

I’d also love to hear your thoughts — what would you change or optimize in this setup for a real-world startup?

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