Route 53 domain cname record without hosted zone

Question

So there are a few things I have done so far:  
  
1) Purchase a domain name through route 53.   
2) Create a public S3 bucket, configure it for static website hosting, and upload some website files. Please note that this bucket's name is identical to the domain name I purchased through route 53.  
3) Create a Cloudfront distribution whose origin is the S3 bucket.  
  
My question is simply this: what is the cheapest way to point the domain to either the Cloudfront distribution or the S3 bucket via SSL (HTTPS)? I keep reading in places that, if the S3 bucket name is identical to the domain name, you can do this without using hosted zones. Is this correct? I'm just looking to reduce my monthly bill (which is $0.50 due to the hosted zone that I am currently using to route traffic to the Cloudfront distribution).

Accepted Answer

> I keep reading in places that, if the S3 bucket name is identical to the domain name, you can do this without using hosted zones. Is this correct?   
  
That's not generally correct.  CNAME records must be contained within some DNS zone on some nameservers (ie a hosted zone in Route 53).  If you're not owning a DNS zone somewhere, you'd have to be putting your CNAME in the parent domain's DNS zone.  DNS Registries do not generally allow that - they only delegate to your DNS zone's nameservers.  it's conceivable that the owner of some domain, e.g. example.com might let you put a CNAME in there called e.g. foo.example.com or foo.bar.example.com, but that's really just someone else owning the zone.

Route 53 domain cname record without hosted zone

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