Today we are happy to announce that we are one of the first cpanel web hosting providers to provide free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificates directly from your cpanel, on all our hosting services. Those of you that may now be familiar with Let’s Encrypt’s mission, the project aims to make encrypted connections in the World Wide Web free and available to all. By getting rid of payment, web server configuration, validation emails and dealing with expired certificates it is meant to significantly lower the complexity of setting up and maintaining TLS encryption.
So what does all this mean? Well, in layman’s terms, you can now install a free browser-trusted certificate on any domain or subdomain in your account with just a few clicks. With our new cPanel plugin labeled “Let’s Encrypt SSL”, you can easily activate a free SSL Certificate for any domain and/or subdomain in a matter of 20-30 seconds. What’s even better, this process is a set and forget. Unlike regular ssl certificates, there is no need to manually renew the domain. All renewals will be submitted automatically by our server, 30 days before the expiration. Which means your certificate will never expire!
So I am sure you are asking yourself, “So what is the catch?”. The good news, is there is no catch. All certificates are free and there is no limit to the amount of certificates that you can generate. Although there are some things to consider with these free SSL Certificates:
- Let’s Encrypt certificates only offers domain validation. So this should not be a replacement for an Extended Validation certificate, which verifies the business as a whole.
- Let’s Encrypt certificates should not be used for any domain processing online transactions such as Paypal, Credit Card payments, etc. These free certificates offer no warranties as compared to other SSL Certificates such as RapidSSL and a Comodo EV SSL Certificate. Warranty is an insurance for an end user against loss of money when submitting a payment on an SSL-secured site.
- Expiration on these certificates is 90 days, unlike regular certificates that expire after a year or more. Don’t let that stop you though, these certificates will be renewed 30 days before the expiration, automatically.
If you keep these key points in mind, you will find a Let’s Encrypt certificate is a great addition to personal and project sites. Just remember that you will not want to use one of these certificates on your business site or any domain that is processing online transactions.
If you’re not entirely comfortable with Let’s Encrypt certificates, don’t worry! You’ll still be able to purchase secure certificates through our website.