In Feb, 2024, AWS changed their policy on Elastic IPs. For those who don’t know, an Elastic IP is a static IP address that doesn’t change. You’ll get a static IP with every EC2 instance you run but it could change over time. An Elastic IP never changes so your Route 53/DNS records never change.
Starting in February, Elastic IP addresses will now incur a cost whether the instance is running or not (they used to not charge if you had the IP address but the instance was shut down).
However, if you have a running instance, you’re charged the same fee regardless. So I got an elastic IP and attached it to this instance since my plan is to run the site full time regardless.
I’m debating on whether or not I should get a verified SSL cert.