CLF-C02 Cloud Technology and Services Practice Question
A small business owner wants to host a simple WordPress website on AWS with a predictable flat monthly price, without learning about VPCs, security groups, instance types, or other AWS complexity. Which AWS service is designed for this simplified use case?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse AWS Elastic Beanstalk with a simplified solution, but Elastic Beanstalk still requires understanding of environments and scaling, and its pricing is not a flat monthly fee; Lightsail is the only service explicitly designed for predictable flat-rate pricing and zero infrastructure management.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Amazon Lightsail
Amazon Lightsail is designed specifically for users who need a simple, predictable monthly pricing model without managing underlying AWS infrastructure like VPCs, security groups, or instance types. It provides pre-configured virtual private servers (VPS) with a fixed monthly cost, including a one-click WordPress deployment, making it ideal for a small business owner who wants to avoid AWS complexity.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Amazon EC2 with a t3.micro
Why it's wrong here
Amazon EC2 is a full-featured IaaS that requires you to manually configure VPCs, security groups, key pairs, and storage volumes, and t3.micro instances still demand ongoing patching and scaling decisions. While capable of running small workloads, it introduces far more operational overhead and variable per-second billing than a simplified VPS. For someone seeking a straightforward small application host, Lightsail's fixed monthly price and bundled components eliminate this admin burden.
- ✗
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Why it's wrong here
AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a PaaS where you upload code and it automatically provisions EC2 instances, load balancers, and auto scaling groups, but this orchestration adds a learning curve and you pay for the underlying resources on a usage basis. It is aimed at developers deploying full applications, not at users who simply want a single always-on virtual server with a predictable bill. Its complexity and lack of a flat monthly pricing plan make it less suitable than Lightsail for a simplified VPS.
- ✓
Amazon Lightsail
Why this is correct
Amazon Lightsail is AWS's simplified VPS offering, providing pre-configured virtual machines with predictable fixed monthly pricing that bundles compute, SSD storage, data transfer, and DNS management. It is designed for users who need a lightweight, always-on server for simple websites or small applications without deep AWS expertise. Unlike EC2, it hides networking and scaling details behind an intuitive console, and unlike Lambda, it maintains a persistent server environment suitable for WordPress or other self-managed software.
- ✗
AWS Lambda
Why it's wrong here
AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that executes short-lived functions in response to events, with no persistent server, operating system access, or ability to install and run software like WordPress. It scales automatically but cannot host a traditional always-on VPS or support interactive sessions or long-running processes. Because this question asks for a simplified virtual server for small workloads, Lambda's event-driven, stateless model does not fit the requirement.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CLF-C02 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CLF-C02 exam.