Connect DollarDeploy with Amazon Web Services (AWS)

DollarDeploy can connect directly to Amazon Web Services (AWS), so you can create, run and terminate EC2 servers without leaving DollarDeploy. You get a Vercel- or Heroku-like experience while your apps run on your own AWS account, at your own server cost, with no lock-in.

AWS support is experimental. It works, but it is newer than our DigitalOcean, Hetzner and Vultr integrations. If you hit anything unexpected, email hello@dollardeploy.com and we will help.

To connect AWS you need 3 things:

1. An active AWS account with billing set up
2. An IAM user with a small, scoped policy and an access key
3. That access key connected to your DollarDeploy account

Create an AWS account

If you do not have an AWS account yet, create one at aws.amazon.com and add a payment method. AWS will not let you launch EC2 servers until billing is set up.

Create an IAM policy

DollarDeploy only needs permission to describe, launch, tag and terminate EC2 servers (plus one read-only pricing action to show cost estimates). Rather than handing over your root credentials, create a dedicated IAM user with just these permissions.

Open the IAM service → Policies → Create policy → switch to the JSON tab, paste the policy below, and give it a name such as DollarDeploy.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "DollarDeployCompute",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ec2:DescribeRegions",
        "ec2:DescribeVpcs",
        "ec2:DescribeSubnets",
        "ec2:DescribeSecurityGroups",
        "ec2:DescribeKeyPairs",
        "ec2:DescribeImages",
        "ec2:DescribeInstances",
        "ec2:DescribeInstanceStatus",
        "ec2:CreateSecurityGroup",
        "ec2:AuthorizeSecurityGroupIngress",
        "ec2:ImportKeyPair",
        "ec2:RunInstances",
        "ec2:CreateTags",
        "ec2:TerminateInstances"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Sid": "DollarDeployPricing",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["pricing:GetProducts"],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

The pricing statement is optional and only used to show monthly price estimates. The integration works without it.

Create an IAM user and access key

1. In the IAM service → Users → Create user, and attach the policy you just created directly to it.
2. Open that user → Security credentials → Create access key.
3. Copy the Access Key ID and the Secret Access Key. The secret is shown only once, so keep it somewhere safe.

Add your access key to DollarDeploy

Open your DollarDeploy Dashboard, go to the Integrations section, and find Amazon Web Services. Paste your Access Key ID and Secret Access Key into the two fields, then click Check.

DollarDeploy verifies the credentials against AWS and saves them if they work. If the check fails, confirm the policy is attached to the user and that both key values were copied without extra spaces.

That is it 🎉

You can now head to the templates page and deploy any app to your own AWS account in one click:

1-click deploy open source apps on AWS

Write us at hello@dollardeploy.com if you need any assistance, or join our Discord to get some help.