Amazon Route 53

Point your Amazon Route 53 domain at Webflow with three DNS records: an A record, a CNAME, and a TXT verification record. SSL provisions automatically once you verify. Without those records in your hosted zone, your domain won't resolve to your published site, and verification will fail.

This setup fits agencies centralizing DNS across client sites, enterprise IT teams that need failover routing, and SaaS companies running marketing sites inside existing AWS infrastructure. If you manage many domains, pair the Route 53 API with the Webflow Data API to provision DNS programmatically.

How to integrate Amazon Route 53 with Webflow

What is Amazon Route 53? Amazon Route 53 is a Domain Name System (DNS) web service that handles DNS routing and domain registration, with health checking available for monitored endpoints. It supports routing policies including simple, failover, latency-based, geolocation, geoproximity, IP-based, weighted round robin, and multivalue answer routing. Route 53 runs on a global network of DNS servers and propagates record changes to its name servers within 60 seconds.

Use Route 53 and Webflow together when your domain's DNS lives in AWS and your site lives on Webflow hosting. If you already run infrastructure on AWS, you can keep DNS in Route 53 while publishing your site on Webflow. Agencies can also centralize DNS for many clients, and teams that need health-check-based failover can keep that routing logic in Route 53. Route 53 and Webflow connect at the DNS record level. There is no marketplace app.

The Amazon Route 53–Webflow integration supports two approaches:

• DNS record configuration in the Route 53 console points your custom domain at Webflow without writing code.
• The Route 53 and Webflow APIs give you full control over DNS provisioning and propagation checks, with failover routing when needed, but require server-side development.

Start with manual record configuration and add API automation only when you're managing DNS across many sites.

Configure DNS records in the Route 53 console

The no-code path connects your domain by adding three records to your Route 53 hosted zone. Copy values from your site settings, paste them into Route 53, then return to verify. This method covers single-domain setups and works entirely through the AWS Management Console and Webflow site settings. You need a paid Site plan to publish to a custom domain.

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First, add the domain in your site settings:

1. Go to Site settings > Publishing > Production.
2. Click Add a custom domain, then choose Manually add domain.
3. Enter your domain and click Add domain.

Next, create the matching records in your Route 53 hosted zone. Open the Route 53 console, choose Hosted zones, select your domain's zone, and choose Create record for each of the following:

• A record for the root (@) pointing to 198.202.211.1
• CNAME record for www pointing to cdn.webflow.com
• TXT record for _webflow containing the one-time verification code shown in your site settings

After the records save, return to your site settings, click Verify domain, and publish to your selected domains. Set www as the default domain. Setting the root as the default without correct DNS can cause redirect loops and the "too many redirects" error. Route 53 propagates changes to its name servers within 60 seconds, though global recursive resolvers can take up to 48 hours. SSL activates within 24 hours after DNS propagation.

Use a non-alias A record for the apex domain

Route 53 alias records can route only to AWS resources like ELB, CloudFront, or S3 website endpoints. Webflow sits outside those targets. The DNS protocol also prohibits CNAME records at the zone apex, which is why the root domain needs an A record.

To point the apex domain correctly:

1. In your hosted zone, choose Create record.
2. Leave the record name blank for the root domain and select Type: A.
3. Enter 198.202.211.1 as the value and choose a TTL.
4. Choose Create records.

Use only a standard non-alias A record. Queries to A records pointing at Webflow IPs are charged at standard Route 53 query rates, since alias query exemptions apply only to AWS targets.

Add CAA records when they already exist

If your domain already has CAA records, SSL provisioning fails unless you authorize the certificate authorities used. CAA records restrict which authorities can issue certificates for your domain, so existing records block Let's Encrypt and Google unless you add them.

To configure CAA records for Webflow SSL:

1. In your hosted zone, create or edit a CAA record for the root (@).
2. Add the value 0 issue "letsencrypt.org".
3. Add a second value 0 issue "pki.goog; cansignhttpexchanges=yes".

Only add CAA records if your domain already uses them. If no CAA records exist, skip this step and SSL provisions without them.

Build with the Webflow and Route 53 APIs

Use the API path to automate DNS provisioning across many domains and support failover routing for high-availability sites. This suits teams provisioning client domains programmatically or wiring DNS into CI/CD pipelines. It also supports health-check failover, but requires server-side development and AWS credentials.

The available APIs handle distinct parts of the workflow:

• The Route 53 API handles hosted zones and DNS records under the /2013-04-01/ version prefix; it also manages health checks
• The Webflow Data API handles site listing and publishing workflows for custom domains
• GetChange polls DNS propagation status between systems

Combine these to provision a domain in Route 53, then publish the matching site through the Data API.

Create and update DNS records with ChangeResourceRecordSets

The ChangeResourceRecordSets operation creates, updates, and deletes records in a hosted zone. Use the UPSERT action as a safe default, since it creates a record when none exists and updates it when one does. This avoids a separate DELETE step during reconfiguration.

To point a www subdomain at Webflow:

1. Send a POST to /2013-04-01/hostedzone/{Id}/rrset/ with an UPSERT change.
2. Set <Type>CNAME</Type> and <Value>cdn.webflow.com</Value> inside the ResourceRecordSet.
3. Capture the Id from the response <ChangeInfo> block, then poll GetChange at /2013-04-01/change/{Id} until <Status> transitions from PENDING to INSYNC.

A CNAME request body looks like this:

POST /2013-04-01/hostedzone/{Id}/rrset/ HTTP/1.1
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ChangeResourceRecordSetsRequest xmlns="https://route53.amazonaws.com/doc/2013-04-01/">
  <ChangeBatch>
    <Changes>
      <Change>
        <Action>UPSERT</Action>
        <ResourceRecordSet>
          <Name>www.example.com</Name>
          <Type>CNAME</Type>
          <TTL>300</TTL>
          <ResourceRecords>
            <ResourceRecord>
              <Value>cdn.webflow.com</Value>
            </ResourceRecord>
          </ResourceRecords>
        </ResourceRecordSet>
      </Change>
    </Changes>
  </ChangeBatch>
</ChangeResourceRecordSetsRequest>

For the apex domain, use <Type>A</Type> with 198.202.211.1 as the value. Route 53 caps API requests at 5 per second per AWS account.

Provision a hosted zone for a new client domain

The CreateHostedZone operation sets up DNS for a domain before you add Webflow records. If you're onboarding a new client domain, create the zone first, then run ChangeResourceRecordSets to add the A, CNAME, and TXT records. Route 53 automatically creates a default SOA record and four NS records for each public zone.

To create a hosted zone:

1. Send a POST to /2013-04-01/hostedzone with a unique CallerReference and the fully qualified Name.
2. Read the DelegationSet.NameServers from the HTTP 201 response and register those four NS records at your domain registrar.
3. Store the hosted zone Id for all subsequent ChangeResourceRecordSets calls.

You cannot create a hosted zone for a top-level domain such as .com. Before changing records on an existing zone, call ListResourceRecordSets to audit current records and avoid overwriting working configuration.

Configure DNS failover with health checks

The CreateHealthCheck operation monitors an endpoint so Route 53 can reroute traffic when it becomes unhealthy. Pair health checks with failover routing to keep traffic flowing to a healthy resource. This supports active-passive setups where Route 53 returns secondary resources only when all primary resources fail.

To set up failover:

1. Send a POST to /2013-04-01/healthcheck with a HealthCheckConfig specifying Type (such as HTTPS), FullyQualifiedDomainName, and FailureThreshold.
2. Capture the HealthCheck.Id from the HTTP 201 response.
3. Use ChangeResourceRecordSets to create two record sets, one with <Failover>PRIMARY</Failover> and one with <Failover>SECONDARY</Failover>, each referencing the HealthCheckId.

Health checks against non-AWS endpoints like Webflow are billed at Route 53's standard non-AWS health check rates. Test failover behavior with real traffic patterns before relying on it in production.

What can you build with the Amazon Route 53 Webflow integration?

Integrating Amazon Route 53 with Webflow lets you route a custom domain to Webflow hosting and automate DNS at scale without manual record edits on every site.

• Single custom domain connection: Point a client's Route 53-managed domain at a new Webflow site by adding an A record to 198.202.211.1, a www CNAME to cdn.webflow.com, and the _webflow TXT verification record.
• Programmatic multi-site provisioning: Run CreateHostedZone and ChangeResourceRecordSets from a CI/CD pipeline, then publish the matching site through the Data API to onboard dozens of client domains without console work.
• High-availability failover: Configure a Route 53 health check against your Webflow endpoint and pair it with primary and secondary failover records so traffic reroutes when the primary becomes unhealthy.
• Subdomain delegation for campaigns: Delegate a separate hosted zone for a campaign subdomain to a marketing team with isolated IAM permissions while IT retains control of the parent domain.

If you need more control over automated provisioning and failover, the API integration path covers those cases with full flexibility.