Creating AWS sub-accounts ➕Free Tier

Doing it right is easier than you might think!

In the previous article, we said why you definitely should have multiple AWS accounts! Here we will show you how easy it is to set up a new one!

And of course, you are not going to — and you don’t need to — remember any of this, just come here every time you are starting a new project and follow these few steps to set everything up!

Now How?

It’s easy! But first, you need your main/root AWS account.. here, we assume that you’ve already done that.

• Login to your root AWS account ( This is the parent / Organizational account that will contain all other accounts and also, if required, will pay for them )
• In the search box, type Organization or find the AWS Organization from the services list ( and dah! click on it! )

• On the top-right corner (or somewhere else if the UI was changed in the future!), there is a button that reads Add an AWS Account.

• Enter the account name ( I’d recommend using your project/environment name ). For the email you can use your own email ( for the parent account ); just add a +project_name at the end of the handle and before @ or if you’d like to use a different email address, I would also recommend leaving the default value ( OrganizationAccountAccessRole ) for IAM role name field or take note of what you change it to as you’ll need this later on. Click on the orange button to finish creation ( it will take a few seconds for the account to be created ). When the account was created, take note of / copy the new account number, you’ll need this soon as well.

• Now click on the little drop-down at the top of the page that indicates your current AWS account and user. we are going to set up a role so you can easily switch from your root account back and forth to the new account(s).

• Click on Switch Roles option at -or near- the bottom of the menu
• In the new dialogue, enter the account number you copied earlier, for role enter. OrganizationAccountAccessRole (or if required, the value you changed it to), for the display name, enter a short name that helps you recognize the account in a glimpse ( you can even pick a color to help with that! ).

• Then click on the Switch button, which will bring you to the new account!
• Here take note that you can go back to the parent account from the same menu, and when back, there is a new shortcut to this new account, so you can go back and forth pretty easily.

• While this is all there is to it, I would highly recommend you don’t stop here! go to the IAM in the new account and create a new user for yourself to log in to the new account directly rather than using your root account ( For Obvious reasons, like the fact that your Root account can now contain multiple accounts and is more important and needs to be sacred and never approached without going through very meticulous rituals and making sacrifices every time you log in (waste a git branch, don’t harm animals!), hiding the access key in between the buttox of a Budha statue is also a security best practice. always walk three times around the building in which you want to log in to your root account ( That’s how Nikolay Tesla did it too.)

Hope you enjoyed this quick write,
Be in touch on LinkedIn or Twitter!

Best,
- mim