AWS › AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)

Can ACM certificates be used with resources outside of AWS managed services, such as on an EC2 instance running your own web server?

Intermediate

Answer

Public ACM certificates issued for use with supported AWS services like CloudFront or an Application Load Balancer cannot be exported or installed directly on a self managed server like an EC2 instance running its own web server software, since ACM is designed specifically to integrate with AWS managed services, though AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate Authority does support exportable private certificates for other use cases.

// Public ACM certificates work directly with these AWS services:
// CloudFront, Application Load Balancer, API Gateway
// They cannot be exported for use on a self managed EC2 web server

Real-world example A team initially expects to install their free ACM certificate directly onto an EC2 instance's own web server, then learns they instead need to place a Load Balancer in front of that instance and attach the certificate there.

Common follow-ups: What is the difference between ACM public certificates and ACM Private CA?;What alternative would you use for encrypting traffic directly to an EC2 instance without a load balancer?

EC2 & Compute;Elastic Load Balancing (ALB NLB & CLB)