Three reasons why you should consider Amazon Route 53 first if you're starting to use AWS in Vietnam or Thailand [2026 Edition]

Hi, I'm Kazuki Kato, an AWS Sales Engineer. My hobby on weekends is buying plants and flowers at the home improvement store and planting them at home. My 6-year-old daughter helps me for about 10 seconds. The rest of the time I'm on my own.

Recently, I've been receiving many inquiries like this from Japanese people who are stationed in Vietnam or Thailand.

"Head office told me to use AWS, but I have no idea where to start."
"We've completely outsourced it to a local IT vendor, but I'm a little worried about whether this is the right approach..."

In local offices in Southeast Asia, there isn't always a dedicated infrastructure specialist; it's not uncommon for someone who handles both general affairs and IT to be tasked with implementing AWS.

For people like that, this is the first suggestion we make.
"Why not start with Amazon Route 53?"

In this column, I will share why it is useful to consider Amazon Route 53 first.

What exactly is Amazon Route 53?

This is a fully managed DNS service provided by AWS. It allows users to utilize the name resolution (mapping to IP addresses) function for their domains.

Most companies own domains and use DNS for their corporate websites and email services. Amazon Route53 offers the potential to upgrade your current DNS environment.

Official documentation:Amazon Route53 

Reason #1 to consider Amazon Route 53: Lower switching costs.

Amazon Route53 is a pay-as-you-go service where you are charged only for what you use.

• Amazon Route53 pricing: $0.50/month per hosted zone – for the first 25 hosted zones
• Standard query: $0.400 USD per million queries – for the first 1 billion queries/month
• Amazon Route 53 pricing

First, you don't need to worry about initial costs to use the service. Also, as mentioned above, the monthly fee is very inexpensive. Depending on the number of host zones (domains) you register and the number of DNS queries (references), you can expect to pay around ¥1,000 per zone per month.

Some of you may be concerned about switching DNS settings, but this is a common practice, and the procedure is even published by JPRS. Here's a brief overview of the steps:

1. Register various record information in the destination DNS server.
2. Minimize the TTL of the source DNS server (important).
3. Switch the delegation information (DNS reference) for the target domain to the destination DNS.

By doing this, it becomes possible to temporarily operate both the old and new DNS systems in parallel, allowing for a seamless transition without any name resolution issues.

Reason #2 to consider Amazon Route 53: It has a "fast delivery" feature for users in Vietnam and Thailand.

While the primary role of DNS is to resolve the names of target domains, Amazon Route53 offers a variety of other features as well.

Health check + failover

It also has a feature that automatically switches to a "Maintenance in Progress" page when the server goes down. This prevents the worst-case scenario where "the server is unresponsive, and not even an error page is displayed." This provides peace of mind even in environments where the local infrastructure is somewhat unstable.

And it became available in the Thailand region (from January 2025).

Starting in January 2025, Amazon Route 53 will support latency-based routing for the Asia Pacific (Thailand) region.

Latency-based routing is a feature that automatically directs users to the server closest to them. If a user in Bangkok accesses the site, they will be directed to a server near Bangkok; if a user in Ho Chi Minh City accesses it, they will be directed to a nearby server, improving the website's loading speed.

Vietnam doesn't have a dedicated region yet, so Singapore (ap-southeast-1) is a realistic option, but Thailand has a direct region in Bangkok. That's pretty impressive.

Reason #3 to consider Amazon Route 53: It's reliable in case of emergencies (and has become even more reliable recently).

Southeast Asia experiences more natural disasters than Japan, and some regions have unstable power infrastructure. In such an environment, Amazon Route 53 is extremely reliable as a BCP (Business Continuity Plan).

Amazon Route 53 itself is highly redundant.

Four DNS references (NS records) are assigned, each located on a server in a different country. This configuration ensures that if one server fails, the second and third will take over. The SLA is defined as 100%. While this is a rather aggressive configuration, the global redundancy supports it.

DNS is a relatively inexpensive service to operate considering its importance. When considering website browsing and email usage, it's always wise to keep BCP (Business Continuity Plan) measures in mind.

Final thoughts

Personally, I feel that Amazon Route53 is a service that is very much like AWS, with not only simple DNS functionality but also useful add-on features.

If you're looking to take your first steps into using AWS in your Vietnam or Thailand office, please consider Amazon Route53. The transition process isn't particularly complicated, so give it a try.

Spending every second longer with family, and minimizing DNS failover timeouts—these are crucial aspects of working in Southeast Asia.