Do I have have to use Amazon Route 53's DNS Service (and pay for it), if I register and manage my domain with them?

Question

I have worked with several godaddy domains in the past. But, for the new project infrastructure I wish to setup, I am planning on registering domain names from the new Amazon's Route 53 - Domain Registration.

My question is do I also need to pay for their DNS Service?

In the past I used to configure hosted zones (CNAME records) from the GoDaddy Console, but never payed anything extra.

How will relying on Amazon effect me in terms of cost and maintenance?

Update: Alright, looks like Amazon doesn't charge for DNS queries routed to their own internal services. Refer here: Route 53 Docs - DNS Service

If somebody is using Amazon Route 53 - Domain Name and their DNS, please let me know if/how you got charged for using their DNS Service.

Answer 1

From the documentation, notice the final step listed in registering a domain, when you want to use an external DNS hosting provider:

(Optional) Delete the hosted zone that Amazon Route 53 created automatically when you registered your domain. This prevents you from being charged for a hosted zone that you aren't using. (emphasis added)

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/domain-register.html

Regarding other providers' pricing practices:

In the past I used to configure hosted zones (CNAME records) from the GoDaddy Console, but never payed anything extra.

That's fine, but you're looking at this situation upside-down. The two services -- domain registration and DNS hosting -- are separate services, but GoDaddy and many other registrars don't give you an option not to pay for DNS hosting, even if you don't use it -- it's built into their domain registration pricing. AWS tends to unbundle service components so that you only pay for the components you use.

If you are hosting services in AWS, using S3, CloudFront, or Elastic Load Balancer, you will find that Route 53's DNS hosting is the preferable option, because of the way resource records work at the apex of a domain due to the design of DNS itself. Route 53 is integrated with the other services to allow failover and redundant DNS configuration in a way that can't be accomplished with most external DNS providers.

Answer 2

Yes, you can use third party DNS service with domains registered in Route53 (you just have to add appropriate Name Servers)

About the pricing, it is all explained in detail here. Keep in mind that although queries to Alias records that are mapped to Elastic Load Balancers, Amazon CloudFront distributions, AWS Elastic Beanstalk environments, and Amazon S3 website buckets are free, that does bot apply to other AWS resources, including Amazon EC2 instances and Amazon RDS databases.

Also you will be charged fixed monthly amount for each hosted zone.