Getting started
Add-Ons
Route53 (DNS)

Route53 (DNS)

Overview

The Route53 add-on creates and manages an AWS Route53 hosted zone for your domain. It automatically updates DNS records with the hostnames of the app it is connected to, as well as any apps it is shared with that fit underneath the domain name pattern.

Purpose and Benefits

  • Automatic DNS Management: DNS records are automatically created and updated for your app’s hostnames
  • Shared Zones: When shared with child apps (like preview apps), records are automatically added for matching domains
  • Existing Zone Support: Uses an existing Route53 hosted zone if one is found in your AWS account, otherwise creates a new one
  • DNS Challenge Support: Enables DNS-01 ACME challenges for wildcard certificate provisioning with SecureProxy

CLI Usage

Create Route53 Zone 

tapit create addon route53 domain=mydomain.com

Required Parameters

  • domain: The domain name for the hosted zone (e.g., mydomain.com)

List and Show Route53 

# List all addons (including Route53)
tapit list addons

# Show specific Route53 details
tapit show addon name=route53

Delete Route53 

tapit delete addon name=route53

Use with SecureProxy and Preview Apps

Route53 is particularly useful when combined with SecureProxy for managing SSL certificates for preview apps with subdomains.

Setup for Preview App Subdomains

  1. Create Route53 hosted zone in your parent app for a dedicated preview domain
  2. Create SecureProxy with DNS Challenge Provider set to Route53
  3. Add wildcard domain to the parent app
  4. Create preview apps with individual subdomains
# In parent app: Create Route53 hosted zone
tapit create addon route53 domain=mypreviewsdomain.com

# In parent app: Create SecureProxy with Route53 DNS challenge
tapit create secureproxy acme_email=my@email.com dns_challenge_provider=route53

# Add wildcard domain to parent app
tapit create domain '*.mypreviewsdomain.com'

# Create preview apps with subdomains
tapit create preview pr-1234-myapp domain=pr-1234.mypreviewsdomain.com
tapit create preview pr-5678-myapp domain=pr-5678.mypreviewsdomain.com

The Route53 zone and SecureProxy will be automatically shared with child preview apps. SecureProxy will use the wildcard certificate to serve traffic for all preview app subdomains over TLS.

How It Works

  1. Zone Creation: When you create a Route53 add-on, Tapitalee checks if a hosted zone for the domain already exists in your AWS account. If found, it uses the existing zone; otherwise, it creates a new one.

  2. Automatic Record Updates: When the app (or any shared child app) has domains that match the hosted zone’s domain pattern, DNS records are automatically created and updated.

  3. Sharing with Child Apps: When the Route53 add-on is shared with child apps (like preview apps), those apps can also have their matching domains automatically added to the hosted zone.

Related Documentation

Cloudflare TunnelDatadog