Amazon Route 53

If you need to constantly take control of domains and transfer them into your registrar, using Route 53 will help, especially if you're already using other parts of AWS. If you need advanced controls for a lot of dynamic records, Route 53 has you covered. If you just want to have a simple website with maybe some email, you don't need it!

Honestly, I've only had to use the support documentation, which is a rare thing to say. Often, services will have such poor documentation that talking to support staff is mandatory, but I've been able to get everything done by just reading the guides already out there. I can't say if the further support is good, but not needing it is better.

There have been great strides in improving the UI for Route 53, but there's still a bit that can be improved on. It's not very beginner friendly, and some of the workflows can be refined just a bit further to make them excellent. Just changing a couple drop downs could make it so much better.

Amazon Route 53 is very good if your team is big or small. For a single person to manage it, if you know what are you doing, you'll notice that it is faster than BIND to manage, for example, no need to add a serial number, and edit entries are also very fast. The only scenario where I think it's less appropriate is when you don't want to spend money dealing with DNS. But, even in that, the price of a single machine is not cheaper than to set up an AWS account and a new DNS zone.

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!

Only rates a "9" because they changed the interface recently and I'm getting used to it. Before this change, for me it was easier to access--really easy. But you'll notice that it is easy to manage current domains, create a new DNS zone, buy a new domain, change everything inside Route 53, and really fast.

If you need to manage DNS (as opposed to using some other service that wires it up for you), it's the best service to reach for. Nobody else is cheaper or more stable, it's completely fully featured, and it's accessible via APIs if you need that. The only reason I'd avoid Route53 is if I already have a DNS provider that I've consolidated my domains in, or if my organization is unable to use AWS.

The product is simple enough that the docs and the UI stand on their own. Its one of the least confusing (/most intuitive) AWS products. As with all Amazon products, don't expect strong email or human support-- you're going to be using their documentation. If you need a human to guide you through the DNS process, you should consider a tool like CloudFlare or NameCheap; if you're a developer, Route53 is where you want to be.

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.

AWS Route 53 is well suited for standard use (if you already use AWS) and for use with AWS services. Its Geo DNS (routing users to an endpoint, depending on detected user geography) works fine as well - can be used if you have users worldwide.

However, AWS Route 53 does not support forwarding or conditional forwarding options for domains used on an on-premise network.

I don't have experience in the support for Route 53, but I believe the support is similar to the support of other AWS services. Good, but a little costly.

Being in the AWS ecosystem, using Route 53 is more or less a given. There are other options out there but none are as integrated into the ecosystem as Route 53. Especially for your internal name resolving there realistically is no other viable alternative. For external name resolving there are other options out there with more options, but do you really need them.

Especially the community support is great. Being such a widely used product there are many available option apart from the official AWS support options.

We are using Route 53 purely programmatically via the APIs. This make it very easy for deployments and keep all naming conventions according to policies. Very happy with it.