Deploying a Full-Stack E-Commerce App on AWS with S3 and CloudFront

Deploying a full-stack application to AWS can feel daunting, but with the right approach it's a smooth process. In this post I'll share exactly how I migrated the Jhumkeshwari e-commerce platform to AWS.

Architecture

**Frontend**: S3 Static Hosting + CloudFront CDN

**Backend**: EC2 (Node.js + Express)

**Database**: MongoDB Atlas (cloud-hosted)

**Image Storage**: S3 + CloudFront

**CI/CD**: AWS Amplify

Setting Up S3 for Image Storage

I replaced local `multer` disk storage with `multer-s3` to stream uploads directly to S3. This eliminated the need to store images on the EC2 instance and made the app stateless.

const multerS3 = require('multer-s3');

const s3 = new AWS.S3();

const upload = multer({

storage: multerS3({

s3: s3,

bucket: process.env.S3_BUCKET_NAME,

key: (req, file, cb) => {

cb(null, `products/${Date.now()}-${file.originalname}`);

}

})

});

CloudFront for CDN

With CloudFront in front of S3, image delivery is fast globally. I updated all image URLs to use the CloudFront distribution URL instead of direct S3 URLs.

Lessons Learned

Always use IAM roles with least-privilege access for EC2

Enable CORS on your S3 bucket if the frontend is on a different domain

Use environment variables for all AWS credentials — never hardcode them