There are several reasons to move a Lightsail machine to another region: keeping the data in the customers' country, grouping everything in a single region or complying with what a contract requires. And there is a different but equally frequent one: moving it to another AWS account, because a provider who is no longer around created it or because it must be in the name of whoever it belongs to.
In Lightsail there is no "move" button. What you do is create a new machine at the destination from a snapshot of the old one, change the domain so it points to the new one and, once everything is checked, delete the old one. Done well, hardly anyone notices the switch. This guide uses Ireland and Paris as the example, but it works for any pair of regions.
Before you start: what each thing means
- Region
- Each of the places where Amazon has data centres. Ireland is eu-west-1 and Paris is eu-west-3. A machine lives in one region and cannot be dragged to another.
- Snapshot
- A complete picture of the machine's disk. It is the vehicle of the move: it is copied to the destination region and the new machine is born from it.
- Plan
- The size of the Lightsail machine with its monthly price. The new machine must have a plan equal to or larger than the snapshot's.
- Static IP
- A fixed address you reserve in a region and assign to a machine. Static IPs do not travel between regions: in Paris you will need a new one.
- DNS
- The system that translates your domain into an IP address. Moving the machine means changing that translation.
- TTL
- The time every computer in the world keeps the DNS answer before asking again. If it is high, the IP change takes hours to reach everyone; if it is low, minutes.
- AWS account
- The contract with Amazon under which your machines live. What is in one account cannot be seen from another, even if it belongs to the same company.
- AMI
- The image of a machine in EC2 (Amazon's custom server service). It is the only format Lightsail can export to and that can indeed be shared with another account.
Step by step
Prepare the DNS a few days ahead
The DNS change is what most conditions the switch, so start here. Go to wherever your domain is managed (Route 53, the registrar, Cloudflare...) and find the A record that points to the Ireland machine's IP. Lower its TTL to
300seconds (5 minutes). If it was at 24 or 48 hours, do this at least two days before the move: until that time has passed, some computers will keep using the old value.Take the chance to list every record that points to the machine:
www, the root domain, maybecorreoorapi. All of them will have to be changed.Take a clean snapshot of the Ireland machine
In the Lightsail console, Ireland region, open the machine, Snapshots tab, Create snapshot button. Clear name:
web-tienda-traslado-paris-2026-10-28.If the machine has its database inside and receives writes all day (a shop), take this first snapshot now to prepare and repeat it right before the switch (step 6), with the website in maintenance mode for a few minutes so you do not lose any order between the picture and the DNS change.
Look in the Storage tab for additional disks: the snapshot includes the ones attached at that moment.
Copy the snapshot to Paris
Snapshot's three-dot menu, Copy to another Region, choose Paris (eu-west-3), keep the name and confirm. Switch region in the selector at the top of the console to see the copy; wait until it is Available. With 40 or 80 GB disks it is usually a matter of 15 to 60 minutes.
Create the new machine in Paris
In Paris, menu of the copied snapshot, Create new instance. Choose:
- Plan: the same it had in Ireland or a larger one. Lightsail does not allow a smaller one. If you take the chance to go up in size, this is the moment with no extra time cost.
- SSH key: Paris's default key is different from Ireland's. The machine keeps the keys it already had, so you will be able to log in with the usual one, but add Paris's too just in case.
- Name: the one it had, or with the suffix
-pariswhile the two coexist.
When it boots, Networking tab: open the same ports the Ireland one had (usually 22, 80 and 443; look at the old one's and copy them). The firewall is not included in the snapshot.
Attach a static IP and check by IP
In the Paris machine's Networking tab, Create static IP, attach it to the machine. It is free while attached (if you leave it loose, it is charged). Write it down: it is the address the domain will point to.
Now check the new machine without touching the DNS yet: on your computer, temporarily point the domain to the new IP in the
hostsfile, open the website, log in to the admin, check that the data is there. If all is well, delete the line fromhosts. If something fails, you fix it in Paris calmly, because customers are still on Ireland.Make the switch: final snapshot and DNS change
If there have been changes in Ireland since the step 2 snapshot (orders, content), you have two options. The clean one: website in maintenance, new snapshot, copy it to Paris and create the definitive machine from it (steps 3 to 5, re-attaching the same static IP). The quick one, if only the database changes: export it from Ireland and import it in Paris at the moment of the switch. In both, the old one must not receive writes while the operation lasts.
With Paris up to date, change the domain's A records to the new static IP. With a 5-minute TTL, within an hour practically everyone is already reaching Paris. Leave the Ireland website in maintenance, not switched off: whoever arrives via the old IP will see the notice instead of an error.
Check, wait and delete the old one
Over the following hours keep an eye on new orders appearing in Paris (and not in Ireland), the HTTPS certificate still being valid and the scheduled tasks working (nightly backup, emails). Also check from your phone on mobile data, so a forgotten
hostsentry does not fool you.Leave the Ireland machine alive one week. Then: final snapshot of the old one just in case, delete it, release its static IP (otherwise it is charged) and turn on automatic snapshots on the Paris one, because they are not inherited. Raise the DNS TTL to a normal value (3,600 or more) once you have had a few quiet days.
Variant: move the machine to another AWS account
Here comes the surprising part: Lightsail does not allow sharing or copying snapshots between accounts. Lightsail snapshots only exist within the account that created them, in any of its regions. If the destination is another account, you have two paths, and neither is one click.
Path 1: export to EC2 and share the image. In the Lightsail console, snapshot menu, Export to Amazon EC2. Lightsail generates, in the same account and region, an AMI (EC2 machine image) and an EBS disk snapshot. From the EC2 console, AMIs menu, select the image, Actions, Edit AMI permissions, and add the destination account number. If the image shows as encrypted with AWS's default key it cannot be shared: you will have to copy it first with your own KMS key and share the key as well. In the destination account, the shared AMI appears under AMIs, filter Private images, and from there an EC2 instance is launched. Careful: the result is an EC2 machine, not Lightsail, and there is no way back. The new account will pay for EC2 by the hour (machine, disk and IP separately) instead of Lightsail's fixed bundle; for many small businesses it is more expensive and more complex.
Path 2: reinstall in the new account and migrate the data. In the destination account you create a new Lightsail machine with the same image (the same application or system) and move the data: a database export, the website files and the uploads (with rsync or scp between the two machines, opening port 22 on the new one to the old one's IP) and the configuration (certificates, cron, payment gateway keys). It is more manual work, but the result is a clean Lightsail machine, with the usual simple bill, in the right account. For a typical website or shop it is usually worth it; for a machine with a lot of hand-made configuration, path 1 saves headaches.
In both variants, the DNS, the new static IP, the week of coexistence and deleting the old one are the same steps as in the region move. And one detail that is not minor: if the source account stops being yours (a provider leaving), have the exported snapshot or the copied data before your access is cut off.
What can go wrong
People are still reaching the old machine days later
The TTL was not lowered far enough in advance, or there is a record that was forgotten (the root domain without www, or a subdomain). Check all the domain's A and AAAA records. Meanwhile, the old one in maintenance mode prevents anyone from buying there without you seeing it.
I cannot choose the plan I want when creating from the snapshot
Lightsail does not let you create a machine with less disk than the snapshot. If you wanted to go down in size to save money, it is not possible this way: you would have to create a new small machine and migrate the data by hand (as in path 2 of the cross-account variant).
The Paris website gives a certificate error
The certificate is on the machine (it travelled with the snapshot), but if it uses automatic renewal such as Let's Encrypt, the renewal needs the domain to already point to the new machine. Until the DNS changes, the existing certificate is still valid; afterwards, force a renewal and check that port 80 is open, which is where validation goes through.
I am charged more than expected the following month
The usual: the old machine not deleted (it is charged while stopped), a loose static IP in Ireland or duplicate snapshots in both regions. Check Lightsail in both regions and clean up. If you used path 1 between accounts, there are also an AMI and an EBS snapshot left in EC2 that should be deleted.
In Simplio
From Simplio the region move comes down to: take the snapshot from the machine's card, press Move to another region (or copy, if you prefer to keep the original) and, on the copy in Paris, Restore in another region choosing the plan. The new machine appears on its card with its IP, and you delete the old one from its own card once the week has passed. The DNS changes and the website checks remain yours, and the activity log records who did each step and when.
The move to another account is not solved by Simplio or by anyone with one click, because the limitation is Lightsail's. What you can do is have both accounts registered in Simplio and see the machines of both on the same screen while they coexist.
The same task, in AWS and in Simplio
| In the AWS console | In Simplio | |
|---|---|---|
| Copy the snapshot to the destination region | Snapshot menu, choose region, switch region to see it and wait | Copy or move to another region with one click from the snapshot list |
| Create the new machine | Snapshot menu, zone, key, plan, name, and then open ports | Restore in another region in one step, choosing the plan |
| Watch both machines while they coexist | Switch region in the console every time | Both on the same screen, with their estimated cost |
| Know who did each step | Search in CloudTrail | Activity log |