1. Amazon Lightsail


What is Lightsail?

Amazon Lightsail is the simplest way to get started with AWS. It provides virtual servers (instances), storage, databases, and networking at a low, predictable monthly price. Think of it as a simplified, bundled AWS experience designed for users who don’t need the full complexity of EC2.

Core Concept Lightsail = simplified AWS for simple workloads. Fixed monthly pricing, pre-configured blueprints, no AWS infrastructure knowledge needed. It’s designed for small businesses, developers, students, and anyone who wants to launch a simple website or application quickly without learning VPC, subnets, or Security Groups.

Key Features

  1. Fixed monthly pricing: starts at $3.50/month (includes compute, storage, and data transfer)
  2. Pre-configured blueprints: WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Node.js, LAMP, Windows Server, etc.
  3. Simple management console (separate from the main AWS Console)
  4. Built-in: SSH terminal, firewall, DNS management, snapshots, static IP
  5. Managed databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL
  6. Object storage (simplified S3-like)
  7. Container services (simplified ECS-like)
  8. CDN (Content Delivery Network) — simplified CloudFront
  9. Load balancer available ($18/month)


Lightsail Instance Plans

When to Use Lightsail

  1. Simple websites and blogs (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal)
  2. Small web applications and development/test environments
  3. Personal projects, learning AWS
  4. Small business websites with predictable traffic
  5. When you need predictable monthly pricing


When NOT to Use Lightsail

  1. Large-scale, enterprise applications (use EC2 + ALB + ASG)
  2. Complex architectures requiring VPC peering, Transit Gateway, and advanced networking
  3. Workloads needing auto scaling beyond basic Lightsail capabilities
  4. When you need GPU instances, Dedicated Hosts, or advanced EC2 features


Lightsail to EC2 Migration

  1. You can upgrade from Lightsail to EC2 when your needs grow
  2. Create a Lightsail snapshot → export to EC2 AMI → launch EC2 instance
  3. Lightsail VPC can peer with your main AWS VPC

2. AWS App Runner


What is App Runner?

AWS App Runner is a fully managed service that makes it easy to deploy containerized web applications and APIs at scale. You provide your source code (from GitHub) or a container image (from ECR), and App Runner builds, deploys, and runs it with automatic scaling, load balancing, and HTTPS.

Core Concept App Runner = the simplest way to run containers in production on AWS. No infrastructure to manage. No Dockerfiles needed (if deploying from source). No VPC, ALB, ASG, or ECS configuration. Point App Runner at your code or image, and it handles everything. Think: Heroku on AWS.

Key Features

  1. Fully managed — no servers, clusters, or orchestration to configure
  2. Automatic builds from GitHub (with CI/CD on every push)
  3. Automatic scaling: scales up with traffic, scales down to zero (if configured)
  4. Built-in load balancing and HTTPS
  5. Auto-deployed: push to GitHub → App Runner builds and deploys automatically
  6. Health checks and auto-healing
  7. VPC connector: optionally connect to private resources (RDS, ElastiCache)


Deployment Sources

App Runner Configuration

  1. CPU: 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, or 4 vCPUs
  2. Memory: 0.5 to 12 GB
  3. Auto Scaling: configure min/max instances and concurrency target per instance
  4. Environment variables and secrets (from SSM Parameter Store or Secrets Manager)
  5. Custom domain with automatic SSL certificate
  6. Observability: integrated with CloudWatch, X-Ray


App Runner Pricing

  1. Pay for compute (vCPU-hours + memory-hours) and build minutes
  2. Automatic pause: if no traffic, instances can pause (pay only for memory)
  3. No charge for load balancing or HTTPS (included)
  4. More expensive than self-managed ECS, but much simpler

3. Compute Services Decision Matrix


4. When to use Lightsail

  1. Simple websites/blogs — WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento.
  2. Small applications — Dev/test environments, personal projects.
  3. Predictable pricing — fixed monthly cost, no surprise bills.
  4. Don't want to learn full AWS — simplified console, no VPC/SG/IAM complexity.
  5. Small databases — managed MySQL/PostgreSQL without RDS complexity.
  6. Static sites — with Lightsail CDN (CloudFront-based).

5. When to use AWS App Runner

  1. Web applications and APIs — deploy from source code or container image.
  2. Developers who don't want to manage infra — no ECS task definitions, no cluster config.
  3. Auto-scaling web services — scales from zero to thousands of requests automatically.
  4. Rapid prototyping — go from code to running app in minutes.
  5. Microservices — simple, individually deployed services.
Exam Tip Service selection: "Simplest way to host WordPress" = Lightsail. "Deploy from GitHub with auto-scaling, no infra" = App Runner. "Upload code, AWS handles deployment" = Beanstalk. "Run 10,000 batch jobs on Spot" = AWS Batch. "Background SQS processing" = Beanstalk Worker Tier or Lambda. "Predictable monthly pricing for small site" = Lightsail. Lightsail = beginners. App Runner = simplest containers. Beanstalk = PaaS with full control. Batch = heavy compute jobs.