Deploying Your Application on AWS: A Simple Guide for Beginners

Want to put your application online? Here’s what to use on AWS

Imagine you’ve built an application (or a website) on your computer. Now you want people to be able to see it on the internet. To do that, you need to host it somewhere. AWS gives you several ways to do this.

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Here are the simplest cases and what to use:

You have…	What you want	Use this AWS service	Why? (very simple explanation)
HTML / CSS / JS files (showcase site, résumé)	Just show a website, with no database and no server	Amazon S3	S3 = a box that stores your files. People can access them like a website.
A Node.js, Python, or PHP app with a database	Host a real app with a backend and a database	Elastic Beanstalk	Beanstalk = you drop in your code, and AWS does the rest to make it work (like planting a seed).
An app with several pieces (for example, separate frontend + backend)	Run different parts of your app	ECS with Fargate	ECS = manage the “blocks” of your app. Fargate = AWS runs them for you. You have nothing to configure.
Just a function (e.g., sending an email)	Run a piece of code without a server	AWS Lambda	You just write a function. AWS runs it only when you need it. You don’t manage any servers.
A site built with React / Angular (frontend only)	Put your frontend site online	S3 + CloudFront	S3 stores the files, CloudFront delivers them quickly to visitors.
You want to do everything yourself like a pro	Set up your own server yourself	Amazon EC2	EC2 = like a computer in the cloud. You install whatever you want and configure everything yourself.

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A few very concrete examples

Project	What you should use
A personal portfolio	S3
A small blog with a database	Elastic Beanstalk
An app with a React frontend + Node backend	ECS with Fargate (or Beanstalk if simple)
A function to send an email from a form	Lambda + API Gateway
An app with lots of microservices (advanced)	ECS or EKS (expert level)

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Summary to help you choose:

• Don’t want to code a server? → S3 (static site)
• Want to deploy a project just like on your PC? → Elastic Beanstalk
• Want to work like a pro, but without too much struggle? → ECS with Fargate
• Want to manage everything yourself? → EC2
• Just want to run a function? → Lambda