Knowledge Base

How to install Let's Encrypt SSL certificates

Introduction

Let's Encrypt SSL certificates are not suitable for everyone. They are excellent as a quick and easy certificate to secure your clients communications with the server but they provide only the basics and do not provide any guarantee as to your identity. IF you require a more secure SSL certificate or verification of who you are, which many stores will need then you should look to buy one of our branded SSL certificates in our store. These come in different security and authentication levels up to and including activating the Green Bar in the Browser. You will never find a bank or other financial institution using a Let's Encrypt certificate, but they are excellent for many sites that would otherwise have not had one. These days everyone needs to have certificate even if you don't carry out any financial transactions on your website. This is due to the way that search engines rate sites and these days you will hurt your SEO efforts if you do not have a SSL certificate. In future search engines and browsers like Google have said that they will penalise websites even further by not allowing users to go to your website with our first accepting the fact that are accessing a dangerous site that has no security. This will mean more and more people will not get through to your website at all.

Supported Servers

Let's Encrypt is only supported on our latest generation servers so if you have had your hosting account for some time you may be on our older servers and this option is not available to you. If you need to have it then you should contact support by submitting a ticket form your account and ask to be moved to our newer servers. All accounts will be moved to the new servers at some point but you can request that this done sooner rather than later.

On our new servers you will generally find that Let's Encrypt is automatically switched on but there are many cases where this will fail and you will need to manually activate it. Only activate Let's Encrypt when you are sure you have completed the requirements below as it will only fail again if you try before this is complete.

Requirements

In order to use Let's Encrypt SSL certificates you must complete the following before activating your Let's Encrypt certificate.

1. Your web hosting account must be on one of latest hosting servers
2. Your web hosting account with us must support Let's Encrypt
3. You must have configured your web hosting account with a Domain Name and the DNS settings
4. You must have moved your DNS name servers to our DNS name servers (This is mostly for clients transferring their websites to us)
5. You must have your WWW record and your ROOT (Sometimes called a @ or BLANK) record pointing to our hosting servers
6. You must have allowed enough time for DNS propagation to complete (This is up to 72 hours, although in most cases completes in 48 hours and in some cases in 1 hour). Check from multiple locations to be sure or contact support to check for you.
7. You can only use one SSL provider per domain name and that must be set to Let's Encrypt in DNS (This will be automatically set on activation). It is important to note that you will not be able to purchase a certificate from another provider for this domain while you are using Let's Encrypt
8. You must activate Let's Encrypt from your hosting server control panel

Once all of these are done you r website will be using the Let's Encrypt SSL certificate usually within five minutes but you should allow up to one hour before contacting support.

Activating Let's Encrypt

The actual process to activate Let's Encrypt is an easy one as long as you have completed the above requirements.

1. Login to your Store account and select your products, either from the Store Client Area Home page and clicking the Services square or from the menu Services --> My Services.
2. Then click on the product that relates to the hosting for the domain you wish to use the Let's Encrypt SSL certificate for.
3. Scroll down and click the green button "CONTROLPANEL LOGIN"
4. This will take you to the Server control panel. Use your Login details provided in your welcome email for this product.
5. Once logged in here click on Sites
6. Then click the line relating to the domain in question.
7. Scroll down the page and tick Let's Encrypt (This will also tick the SSL line if it is not already ticked)
8. Click Save
9. Log Out

Your Let's Encrypt certificate will be installed and activated automatically and you should be able to start using it in about 5 minutes, although you should wait for up to one hour before contacting support.

Please note that if you are using WordPress or some other CMS sites you will need to update your settings to use HTTPS instead of HTTP in order to use your SSL certificate. Please b