Great question! This is a super common point of confusion with ACM, so let's break it down clearly.

The short answer: It depends on the type of ACM certificate you’re using, but there are fully AWS-native ways to make this work without a load balancer.

Critical Limitation to Understand First #

AWS’s free public ACM certificates are built to work with AWS managed services (like ELB, CloudFront, or API Gateway) — you cannot download the private key or full certificate chain to install directly on your EC2 instance. ACM retains control of these keys for security purposes, so direct installation on EC2 isn’t possible with free public certificates.

That said, you have two AWS-native paths to achieve your goal without a load balancer:

Option 1: Use ACM Private CA (Paid Service) #

If you want to install a certificate directly on EC2 while staying entirely within the AWS ecosystem, ACM Private CA is your solution. This paid service lets you create your own private certificate authority, sign certificates for your domains (public or internal), and download the full certificate + private key to install on your EC2 instance.

Here’s a simplified step-by-step:

• Create an ACM Private CA in your EC2’s AWS region (you can choose a root or subordinate CA).
• Issue a certificate for your target domain using the Private CA.
• Download the certificate file, private key, and certificate chain from the ACM console.
• Install these files on your EC2 instance’s web server (Apache, Nginx, etc.) just like you would with any third-party certificate.

This keeps everything within AWS, no load balancer required.

Option 2: Use CloudFront with a Free ACM Certificate (No Load Balancer) #

If you want to stick with the free public ACM certificate, you can use CloudFront (AWS’s CDN service, not a load balancer) as a middle layer. Here’s how it works:

• Request a free public ACM certificate in the us-east-1 region (required for CloudFront, even if your EC2 is in another region).
• Create a CloudFront distribution, setting your EC2 instance as the origin (use your EC2’s public IP or a DNS record pointing to it).
• Attach your ACM certificate to the CloudFront distribution to enable HTTPS for end users.
• Optional: Restrict EC2 traffic to only come from CloudFront using origin access control for added security.

End users will access your site via CloudFront’s HTTPS domain, and CloudFront will forward requests to your EC2 instance (either over HTTP or HTTPS if you have a self-signed certificate on EC2). This avoids a load balancer entirely and uses only AWS services.

Recap of Your AWS-Native Options #

• Free public ACM certificate: Pair it with CloudFront (not a load balancer) to deliver HTTPS to end users without installing the certificate directly on EC2.
• Direct EC2 installation: Use ACM Private CA to generate a downloadable certificate you can install directly on your instance.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者Wondering Coder