Let's Encrypt Hosting — Free Automated SSL on Every Plan

Let's Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority operated by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG). It issues Domain Validated SSL certificates at no cost, funded by sponsorships from major technology companies including Google, Mozilla, Meta, and Cisco. Since its launch in 2016, Let's Encrypt has issued billions of certificates and now secures a significant portion of the entire web.

Let's Encrypt certificates are trusted by every major browser and operating system. They use the same 256-bit encryption as paid certificates and comply with the same CA/Browser Forum standards. The only limitation compared to paid options is that Let's Encrypt offers only Domain Validation — not OV or EV — and certificates expire after 90 days (though renewal is automated).

The 90-day validity period is a deliberate security design. Shorter certificate lifetimes reduce the window of exposure if a private key is compromised and encourage the automation of certificate management, which eliminates the human error that causes most certificate-related outages.

Our hosting platform runs a custom ACME client that automatically provisions Let's Encrypt certificates for every domain and subdomain on your account. When you add a domain and point its DNS to our servers, the system detects the new domain, requests a certificate, completes HTTP-01 or DNS-01 validation, and installs the certificate — all within minutes and without any input from you.

The integration is deeper than a simple Certbot installation. Our system coordinates with the web server, CDN layer, and load balancers to ensure certificates are deployed consistently across all infrastructure that serves your domain. Whether a request hits the primary server or a CDN edge node, the correct certificate is presented.

We monitor the Let's Encrypt API rate limits and queue requests intelligently to prevent hitting issuance limits. For accounts with many domains, our system staggers certificate requests to stay within Let's Encrypt's per-account limits while ensuring all domains receive certificates promptly. This managed approach prevents the frustrating rate limit errors that users encounter when running their own ACME clients.

Let's Encrypt certificates expire after 90 days, which means renewal must happen frequently. Our automation begins the renewal process 30 days before expiration — providing a generous buffer in case of temporary validation failures. If the first renewal attempt fails (for example, due to a DNS propagation delay), the system retries daily until successful.

Renewal is entirely transparent. The new certificate replaces the old one without any downtime, server restart, or configuration change. Your visitors experience zero interruption, and you receive a brief email confirmation that renewal completed successfully. If a renewal fails after multiple attempts, we escalate to our support team and notify you with specific remediation steps.

Our renewal success rate exceeds 99.95%, with the rare failures typically caused by DNS changes that invalidate domain verification. Even in these cases, our monitoring catches the issue well before the certificate actually expires, giving you and our team ample time to resolve it. No AnubizHost customer has ever experienced an unplanned certificate expiration due to a Let's Encrypt renewal failure.

Let's Encrypt is the right choice for the majority of websites. Personal sites, blogs, portfolios, small businesses, forums, and content sites all benefit from free, automated SSL without any reason to pay for a certificate. The encryption is identical to paid options, and the automation is often more reliable than manual certificate management.

Consider a paid certificate when you need Organization or Extended Validation to display business identity, when your compliance requirements mandate specific certificate authorities, when you need warranty coverage for certificate mis-issuance, or when you prefer wildcard certificates without the complexity of DNS-01 validation required by Let's Encrypt wildcards.

AnubizHost makes it easy to switch between free and paid certificates. Your Let's Encrypt certificate continues working until you purchase and install a paid alternative, and you can always revert to Let's Encrypt if your needs change. Both options benefit from the same auto-renewal infrastructure and management dashboard. There is never a reason to go without SSL — free coverage is always available as a baseline.