We are happy to announce that we have integrated Let's Encrypt on the majority of our Shared and Reseller servers and we are now able to offer free SSL certificates.
What is Let’s Encrypt?
Let’s Encrypt is a new free certificate authority, built on a foundation of cooperation and openness, that lets everyone be up and running with basic server certificates for their domains through a simple one-click process.It is important to understand Let's Encrypt's Pros and Cons before activating it.
+ Pros:
- Free: Anyone who owns a domain name can get a certificate validated for that domain free of charge.
- Automatic: The entire enrolment process for certificates occurs painlessly during the server’s native installation or configuration process, while renewal occurs automatically in the background.
- Secure: Let’s Encrypt will serve as a platform for implementing modern security techniques and best practices.
- Transparent: All records of certificate issuance and revocation will be available to anyone who wishes to inspect them.
- Open: The automated issuance and renewal protocol will be an open standard and as much of the software as possible will be open source.
- Better for SEO: Adding SSL to your site will help it rank higher in Google.
- Cons:
- Basic domain validation means it's a low trust certificate - not well suited for e-commerce stores.
- No dynamic site seal for your web site - lower trust for your visitors compared to a normal SSL certificate.
- No green address bar as with Premium EV certificates.
- No monetary warranty for your end users. Normal SSL certificates provide warranties of $10k - $1.25m.
- Not compatible with some browsers on older operating systems, including Internet Explorer on Windows XP.
Who is it for?
This SSL certificate is suitable for small personal websites, blogs and forums where extended validation, trust seals or a consumer warranty are not required.Search engines can rank web sites using HTTPS higher, so this turns Let’s Encrypt into a wonderful advantage for web sites, without any additional expense.
Who is it not for?
If your business web site uses forms to collect personal or sensitive data, or accepts payments online, a regular SSL certificate is the better choice. Additionally, if you need to support users on older browsers and operating systems, a regular SSL still provides the best compatibility. This likely represents a very small number of visitors, but nonetheless, we'd recommend reviewing your site analytics to determine whether this should be a priority for you.Is this available to all customers?
Let's Encrypt is supported on the majority of our shared hosting servers with only a small portion not currently supporting it. If it is supported by your server, you will find the Let's Encrypt icon in your cPanel. We will be upgrading all non-supported shared servers in ~60 days so that they are also compatible.Customers with cloud and dedicated servers can raise a support ticket if they wish to have Let’s Encrypt deployed on their server. If you have your own server, a small annual charge is payable to license the cPanel plugin (£20 GBP / $30 USD).
Installing Let’s Encrypt certificates:
You can easily install Let’s Encrypt certificates for any of your web sites through your cPanel:
You can have multiple certificates installed on your account so you can secure each addon and subdomain you have.
The Let's Encrypt certificates auto-renew, unless you choose to cancel them through the cPanel interface first.
Refer to our Let's Encrypt Setup Tutorial if you need more assistance with installing Let's Encrypt SSL on your account.
We've also produced this video to step you through it:
Need to know more about Let's Encrypt? Check out the Let's Encrypt FAQ here.
