Amazon CloudFront vs. Amazon Route 53

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon CloudFront
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
CloudFront is the content delivery network (CDN) from Amazon Web Services.
$0.02
Amazon Route 53
Score 9.7 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Route 53 is a Cloud Domain Name System (DNS) offered by Amazon AWS as a reliable way to route visitors to web applications and other site traffic to locations within a company's infrastructure, which can be configured to monitor the health and performance of traffic and endpoints in the network.
$0.40
Per Zone Per Month
Pricing
Amazon CloudFrontAmazon Route 53
Editions & Modules
Over 5PB
$0.02
Next 524TB
$0.03
Next 4PB
$0.03
Next 350TB
$0.04
Next 100TB
$0.06
Next 40TB
$0.08
First 10TB
$0.09
Standard
$0.40
Per Zone Per Month
Queries
$0.60
Per Million Queries
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon CloudFrontAmazon Route 53
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon CloudFrontAmazon Route 53
Considered Both Products
Amazon CloudFront
Chose Amazon CloudFront
CloudFronts beats everyone with their free 1 TB monthly bandwidth usage. And if we compare speed and latency of CloudFront with the BunnyCDN and CloudFare, CloudFront is was faster than them. With CloudFront, we get options like signed URL and signed cookies which prevent our …
Chose Amazon CloudFront
Have used the IBM Cloud Content Delivery Network for a very short time span like a couple of weeks. Both the setup as well as interactions with other services are a little complicated or not straightforward when compared to AWS.
Also, IBM cloud has less number of edge locations …
Chose Amazon CloudFront
Cloudfront is one of the oldest CDN with presence in a lot of locations. This really helps in making the content load faster in all the locations globally. Other products have also caught up with this but still AWS has a lot of other services which can be connected with the CDN …
Chose Amazon CloudFront
Amazon has always been creative and leading, and I have been using its services for years. They are very reassuring and have fast and responsive support--you can call them from any time zone to respond quickly. High security on servers, open hands on changes, and increasing and …
Chose Amazon CloudFront
We use a great set of AWS features and it was easy to implement Amazon CloudFront. It fulfills our needs, and the learning curve was not difficult given the AWS configuration we already have.
Chose Amazon CloudFront
I find Amazon CloudFront to be better suited to my business needs in terms of robustness, agility and scalalbility of the solution.
Chose Amazon CloudFront
Because our products are built and utilize other AWS features, it was easiest to implement Amazon CloudFront based on initial environment configuration. Other CDNs were easier to get started with but required manual intervention to update overtime.
Chose Amazon CloudFront
If you are using other AWS services, then no other CDN can compete with AWS CloudFront. Its integration with WAF, Route53, ACM allow it to provide a whole ecosystem for building websites and using a CDN. It gives developers access to inexpensive, pay-as-you-go pricing. …
Chose Amazon CloudFront
We ended up selecting CloudFront because we were already using an Amazon stack. To be honest, since we were already in the ecosystem there was little reason to deviate once we saw pricing was comparable.
Chose Amazon CloudFront
We went with CloudFront primarily because we have all of our other services with Amazon already. We are using EC2, S3, Elastic Beanstalk, and are very familiar with the interface. It did not disappoint.
Chose Amazon CloudFront
CloudFront is well-suited for a particular use case with its native tie-ins to other Amazon/AWS services, like S3. If choosing from a platform-specific CDN, we tend to go with whichever CDN is available for use on that platform (e.g. Google or Azure). In rare cases we might …
Chose Amazon CloudFront
Cloudflare is another great CDN service. It comes with a lot of things set up of the box for you, and gives you a basic and reasonable set up straight away. It also has a free-tier for smaller sites. Cloudflare doesn't quite have the same level of configurability, however. …
Chose Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront free Tier allows up to 50 GB of data transfer per month which is not there in any of the above. Amazon CloudFront provides detailed reporting around the most frequently used objects, monitoring and usage charts. Amazon CloudFront is suitable to help you …
Amazon Route 53
Chose Amazon Route 53
We didn't test any other product like Amazon Route 53, we were doing all these settings by ourselves.
Chose Amazon Route 53
We purchased our domain names through Networksolutions.com and do rely on their DNS services for basic functionality (SPF hard reject records, etc.), since it was included at no cost; however, for our main domains, we utilize Route 53 because of AWS's high availability, …
Chose Amazon Route 53
Amazon is priced higher than Google's DNS, but since our gear (Cloudfront, ALB, etc) is in AWS, Amazon Route 53 is easier to use sop we don't have to manage two vendors.
Chose Amazon Route 53
Cloudflare is also similar in the features to Route 53. However, since we are completely hosted on the AWS cloud, we can't use Cloudflare for configuring our internal networks, and integrating with the other services. The API based integration of AWS via Terraform is another …
Chose Amazon Route 53
This was the POC that was done during the initial stage but we never put this in production
Chose Amazon Route 53
Amazon Route 53 DNS service is much better than GCP and Azure or any other cloud provider DNS service due to the fact that it not only provides basic DNS service but on top of it it offers firewall DNS feature i.e. rules and policies can be defined to allow/reject certain …
Chose Amazon Route 53
Since we are heavy users of AWS, it was only natural for us to go with Route53. It's well integrated with other AWS services, and domain creation and modifications can get automated with the infrastructure itself, with tools like terraform.
We also use Cloudfront and ALBs …
Chose Amazon Route 53
Amazon Route 53 is intended for simple websites that host HTML5 or static content. This is probably the default solution if you need something simple and don't want to rent a web server to host a website. It is good to host full functional but simple website or HTML5 game.
Chose Amazon Route 53
Kinda of costly and doesn't have many services which Amazon is able to offer. And Route 53 is slightly faster than it.
Chose Amazon Route 53
When working with AWS, Route 53 is hands down the better solution. If you live in GCP, then Google Cloud DNS is the way to go. GoDaddy is more of a consumer-facing product and is perfectly fine when Services are not being utilized in any Cloud Environment. Eventually, all of …
Chose Amazon Route 53
Route 53 is one of those essential services that you'll inevitably come across. It's one of the easiest to understand and configure in AWS, and using it is helpful if you're making use of any other components in the AWS ecosystem because most other components will …
Chose Amazon Route 53
I only compared to BIND, as we intend to migrate to AWS as soon as possible.
Chose Amazon Route 53
Both Azure DNS and GoDaddy's DNS works great, but when you use AWS services and infrastructure, it is much easier to use AWS DNS service. Using AWS DNS service you can manage and maintain your infrastructure in one place, it saves some time. If you use AWS services, you can …
Chose Amazon Route 53
GoDaddy is fine if you just want to have a domain and set up a few simple records. But if part of your business is transferring domains and constantly updating records for new websites, email changes, and security, then a registrar-based DNS service just won't cut it. Route 53 …
Chose Amazon Route 53
Infoblox is the one we used on premises and briefly looked at for AWS. Route 53 however is well suited for our needs and was easier to implement. As AWS was already new for use, learning Route 53 anew made no difference in selecting it.
Chose Amazon Route 53
CloudFlare has been good for anything external facing, but Route53 has met our needs perfectly for anything internal.
Chose Amazon Route 53
Route 53 is head and shoulders above GoDaddy. GoDaddy's DNS availability was problematic with us earlier on and at that time we made a decision to move our domains to Route 53 under Amazon. Since then we haven't experienced any DNS outages and it has been pretty rock solid. …
Chose Amazon Route 53
Route53 was used because I initially thought we were going to have our infrastructure on AWS. Once our team transitioned to Google Cloud, I was left scrambling to migrate our DNS solution to point to those servers instead. Because there is a mandatory 45-day transfer wait …
Chose Amazon Route 53
I have experience running several on-site DNS services such as PowerDNS, djbdns, bind, and others. Route 53 removes the need to manage the server and DNS software, allowing you to focus on the DNS content itself.
Chose Amazon Route 53
We chose Amazon Route 53 over Azure DNS for its advanced routing, built-in health checks, and seamless integration with AWS services like EC2, ALB, and CloudFront. Amazon Route 53 also supports domain registration and automated failover, which Azure DNS lacks natively. Its …
Best Alternatives
Amazon CloudFrontAmazon Route 53
Small Businesses
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.7 out of 10
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.7 out of 10
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Azure CDN
Azure CDN
Score 7.1 out of 10
Google Cloud DNS
Google Cloud DNS
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon CloudFrontAmazon Route 53
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon CloudFrontAmazon Route 53
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon CloudFront is best suited when there is a need of speed in serving static and dynanic web contents of a web application. If the content is already in that edge location, CloudFront delivers it immediately. If the content is not currently in that edge location, CloudFront retrieves it from an Amazon S3 bucket or an HTTP server. Amazon CloudFront is not appropriate in case users can tolerate some delays or servers are present near to the location of user. It also Integrates through the W3 Total Cache plugin. Amazon CloudFront Pricing based on bandwidth usage that's the best part of it.
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- Routing users to the closest or best-performing resources: Route 53 allows you to use geolocation and latency-based routing to route users to the resources that will give them the best performance. - Load balancing: Route 53 can be used to distribute incoming traffic across multiple resources, such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances or Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) tasks, to improve the availability and scalability of your application. - Managing domain names: Route 53 can be used to register domain names and manage DNS records, making it a one-stop solution for managing your domain name and routing traffic to your resources. Scenarios where Route 53 is less appropriate include:Applications with very high query rates: Route 53 is designed to handle millions of queries per second, but if your application generates an extremely high query rate, you may need to use a specialized DNS service.Applications that require very low latency: Route 53 is designed to provide low-latency DNS service, but if your application requires ultra-low latency, you may need to use a specialized DNS service or a self-hosted DNS solution.Applications that require advanced security features: Route 53 provides basic security features such as DNSSEC, but if your application requires advanced security features such as DDoS protection, you may need to use a specialized DNS service.
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Pros
  • Solid CDN services, does what it says on the tin
  • Lots of configuration options, which allow for different setups and pricing strategies
  • Lambda@Edge integration allows for really quite complex behaviours to be executed in the cloud at the edge node itself. This means there are a huge amount of possibilities for shaping and altering traffic close to the viewer.
  • Simple integration to other AWS services (e.g. S3)
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  • We can purchase our domain through Route 53 and can be hosted for cheaper prices in AWS.
  • There are many number of routing policies you can go ahead with and this will come into picture when the customer satisfaction is required at most, so choose routing policy accordingly.
  • As usual health checks are part of DNS systems, this is also provided at cheaper rates when total process is done in Route 53 service.
  • It can be used as standalone application from AWS
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Cons
  • If price is the main concern, CloudFront is not the cheapest-in-class by a wide margin
  • Some of the settings are not obvious to new users, and the management dashboards could use work
  • Lacks fine-grained access controls and statistical reports for usage
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  • Price, it is not expensive ... but you can find some cheaper and even free DNS solutions.
  • If you use non-AWS infrastructure, Route 53 doesn't have significant advantages on other services.
  • AWS Route 53 does not support forwarding or conditional forwarding options for domains used on an on-premise network.
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Usability
Easy way to integrate a CDN within the AWS infrastructure. It allows further customization based on company needs.
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You need to know what DNS is; this is a tool built for developers who already know the technology and are just looking for a DNS management tool. The tool is very usable given that. If you're not familiar with DNS, Route53 isn't really for you and you won't find it to be very usable-- you'll need to go read the documentation, and that will start with learning what DNS is
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Support Rating
CloudFront is a good CDN solution. It can be a bit complicated to implement depending on your needs, but AWS tech support is great. You get to avoid a ton of upfront costs by going with CloudFront. It works best in conjunction with other AWS services in your infrastructure. Once you set it up, you won't need to do much to maintain it. It just works.
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Until today, I have never needed support to Route53 because the documentation is great. But, I have needed it for other services. And they're near perfect always. Except that they don't have Portuguese support yet and they're sometimes slow to answer (48 hours in non-critical ones, in two tickets). But usually, they're amazing!
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Alternatives Considered
Have used the IBM Cloud Content Delivery Network for a very short time span like a couple of weeks. Both the setup as well as interactions with other services are a little complicated or not straightforward when compared to AWS. Also, IBM cloud has less number of edge locations than AWS Cloudfront.
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Cloudflare is also similar in the features to Route 53. However, since we are completely hosted on the AWS cloud, we can't use Cloudflare for configuring our internal networks, and integrating with the other services. The API based integration of AWS via Terraform is another factor that allows us to automate most of our deployments and manage them programmatically
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Return on Investment
  • RoI for using CloudFront is immense. You can use it for all your certificate management and static asset management of your websites using CloudFront.
  • It is as good or better than any other CDN provider with multi-region support across the world using AWS regions.
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  • All of our brand domain names (about 80 brands) are managed in there
  • Many non marketing or brand domains are also in there
  • There isn't any defined ROI because it's such a trivial and necessary service with impacts all business operations
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ScreenShots