AWS

What Is AWS?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a global cloud platform with 200+ services for building and scaling everything from simple sites to enterprise infrastructure.

For Strapi, common AWS tools include:

• EC2 for hosting Strapi on virtual machines
• S3 for storing uploaded media
• RDS for managed databases
• VPC and Route 53 for networking and DNS

Developers choose AWS for its flexibility, scale, and pay-as-you-go pricing. It’s the market leader in cloud computing and supports everything from web apps to ML workloads.

That said, Strapi Cloud offers a fully managed alternative—with built-in hosting, database, and S3-backed media storage. It’s ideal if you want to focus on building your app, not managing cloud infrastructure.

Why Use Strapi with AWS?

Pairing Strapi with AWS gives you a scalable, flexible content stack that handles real-world demands, from traffic spikes to global delivery.

When your Strapi app needs to scale, Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling keeps performance steady by automatically adjusting server capacity. AWS's global infrastructure and CloudFront CDN ensure your content loads quickly, no matter where your users are.

Strapi also integrates easily with key AWS services. Store media in S3, manage your database with RDS, and extend functionality using Lambda. While setup may require some configuration, Strapi’s plugin ecosystem and support for custom APIs give you the flexibility to tailor everything to your needs.

Security is another strong match. Combine Strapi’s role-based access control with AWS tools like IAM, VPCs, and WAF to protect your stack from end to end.

For teams that want to simplify deployment and infrastructure management, recent updates to Strapi Cloud offer a managed experience that still plays nicely with AWS services behind the scenes.

How to Integrate AWS with Strapi

By combining services like EC2, RDS, and S3, you can create a scalable, secure, production-grade Strapi deployment. If you'd rather skip provisioning and infrastructure altogether, Strapi Cloud provides an AWS-backed environment with minimal configuration.

1. Set Up Your Strapi Project

Before deploying, make sure you’ve created a Strapi app locally. Follow the deployment configuration guide to prepare your environment variables and production settings.

2. Launch an EC2 Instance

Use Amazon EC2 to host your Strapi backend.

• Choose a Linux AMI (e.g., Ubuntu)
• Set up security groups to allow HTTP/HTTPS and SSH
• Install Node.js, npm/yarn, and your database client
• Clone your Strapi project and run:

yarn build
yarn start

For simpler setup and managed scaling, Strapi Cloud handles this for you out of the box.

3. Connect to Amazon RDS

Instead of hosting your database on the EC2 instance, use Amazon RDS for a managed database.

• Create a PostgreSQL or MySQL instance
• Update your .env file:

DATABASE_CLIENT=postgres
DATABASE_HOST=your-db-host.rds.amazonaws.com
DATABASE_PORT=5432
DATABASE_NAME=strapi
DATABASE_USERNAME=youruser
DATABASE_PASSWORD=yourpassword

• Make sure your EC2 instance can access the RDS instance (VPC + security groups)

4. Configure S3 for Media Storage

Strapi uses a pluggable upload system. To use Amazon S3 as your media backend:

Install the AWS S3 provider:

yarn add @strapi/provider-upload-aws-s3

Update your config/plugins.js file:

module.exports = ({ env }) => ({
  // ...
  upload: {
    config: {
      provider: 'aws-s3',
      providerOptions: {
        baseUrl: env('CDN_URL'),
        rootPath: env('CDN_ROOT_PATH'),
        s3Options: {
          credentials: {
            accessKeyId: env('AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID'),
            secretAccessKey: env('AWS_ACCESS_SECRET'),
          },
          region: env('AWS_REGION'),
          params: {
            ACL: env('AWS_ACL', 'public-read'),
            signedUrlExpires: env('AWS_SIGNED_URL_EXPIRES', 15 * 60),
            Bucket: env('AWS_BUCKET'),
          },
        },
      },
      actionOptions: {
        upload: {},
        uploadStream: {},
        delete: {},
      },
    },
  },
  // ...
});

Add these to your .env file:

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your-access-key
AWS_ACCESS_SECRET=your-secret-key
AWS_REGION=your-region
AWS_BUCKET=your-bucket-name
AWS_SIGNED_URL_EXPIRES=your-aws-signed-url
AWS_ACL=your-aws-acl

This is especially useful for large projects or global teams. For those who prefer a managed experience, Strapi Cloud uses S3 under the hood—no manual setup required.

By combining these services, you can create a scalable, secure, production-grade Strapi deployment. And if you'd rather skip provisioning and infrastructure altogether, Strapi Cloud provides an AWS-backed environment with minimal configuration.

Project Example: Integrate AWS With Strapi (with GitHub Project Repo)

Let’s get practical. Here’s a real-world example of deploying Strapi with AWS services to create a production-ready blog platform. This setup demonstrates how to combine key AWS tools to run Strapi at scale. Want to explore the code? You’ll find everything you need in this GitHub repository. If you want similar benefits without the infrastructure setup, Strapi Cloud offers a managed experience with AWS-backed scalability.

Project Overview

This demo project is a blog platform that supports multi-author publishing using:

• EC2 to run the Strapi backend
• RDS (PostgreSQL) for the production database
• S3 for image and file storage
• CloudFront to deliver content globally

Strapi handles content management, while AWS takes care of performance, scaling, and distribution.

Key Features

• Multi-user authentication and authorization
• Article creation and publishing workflows
• Media upload and management via S3
• Global content delivery with CloudFront CDN

Deployment Architecture

This setup follows AWS well-architected best practices for performance, reliability, and security:

• Strapi runs on EC2 in a private subnet
• The RDS database is isolated in a separate private subnet
• An Application Load Balancer (ALB) in a public subnet routes incoming traffic
• Media files are stored in S3 and distributed through CloudFront

If you want similar benefits without the infrastructure setup, Strapi Cloud offers a managed experience with AWS-backed scalability.

Deployment Steps to Integrate AWS With Strapi

1. Clone the deployment repository

git clone https://github.com/61FINTECH/deploy-strapi-on-aws.git
cd deploy-strapi-on-aws

2. Provision AWS infrastructure using CloudFormation

aws cloudformation create-stack --stack-name strapi-blog --template-body file://cloudformation-template.yaml --capabilities CAPABILITY_IAM

3. SSH into the EC2 instance and clone the Strapi app

git clone https://github.com/61FINTECH/strapi-blog-app.git
cd strapi-blog-app
npm install

4. Configure environment variables for your database and S3 credentials

5. Build and start the Strapi application

npm run build
npm run start

CI/CD Pipeline

The project includes a CI/CD workflow using AWS CodePipeline. It handles:

• Pulling the latest code from GitHub
• Building the Strapi project
• Running automated tests
• Deploying to Elastic Beanstalk

Refer to cicd-setup.md in the repo for detailed instructions.

Scaling Considerations

To support high-traffic production environments, this project includes:

• Auto Scaling Groups for EC2 to adjust capacity on demand
• Read replicas for RDS to improve database read performance
• CloudFront caching to reduce latency and offload server load

Security Best Practices

The project follows several best practices to secure your stack:

• IAM roles are scoped to least privilege
• Security groups restrict access to specific services and ports
• TLS encryption protects API traffic (if enabled via ALB config)
• AWS Secrets Manager stores environment variables and secrets securely

Monitoring and Logging

Observability is handled through Amazon CloudWatch:

• Alarms for CPU, memory, and disk usage
• Application metrics like response time and error rate
• Centralized logging from EC2, RDS, and the Node.js process

Strapi Open Office Hours

If you have any questions about Strapi 5 or just would like to stop by and say hi, you can join us at Strapi's Discord Open Office Hours Monday through Friday at 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm CST.

In other note, Strapi is now live on AWS Marketplace. Check it out here.

For more details, visit the Strapi documentation and AWS documentation.