SSL Certificate for VPS — Secure Your Virtual Private Server

AnubizHost VPS plans support every SSL certificate type. Free Let's Encrypt certificates are available through our pre-installed ACME client or through Certbot, which is included in our server images. For paid certificates, you can purchase DV, OV, EV, wildcard, or multi-domain certificates through your AnubizHost account and install them on your VPS manually or through our automated tools.

Unmanaged VPS customers have full root access to configure SSL however they prefer. Install certificates through your web server's native configuration, use a reverse proxy like Traefik or Caddy that handles SSL automatically, or implement custom certificate management through tools like acme.sh. The flexibility of a VPS means SSL works however your architecture demands.

Managed VPS customers benefit from our SSL management panel, which provides a web interface for requesting, installing, and renewing certificates without touching the command line. The panel supports Apache, Nginx, and LiteSpeed, auto-detects your web server, and configures the certificate with optimal security settings automatically.

Every AnubizHost VPS image comes with Certbot pre-installed and configured for your web server. Requesting a Let's Encrypt certificate is a single command: certbot --nginx or certbot --apache, depending on your web server. The tool handles validation, certificate download, server configuration, and renewal scheduling automatically.

For more advanced setups, our VPS images include acme.sh as an alternative ACME client that supports DNS-01 validation (required for wildcard certificates), custom hooks for deployment to multiple services, and integration with our DNS API for fully automated DNS validation without manual record creation.

Renewal is handled by a systemd timer that runs twice daily, checking for certificates approaching expiration and renewing them automatically. The timer is pre-configured and active on every VPS — you do not need to set up cron jobs or remember to run renewal commands. Certificates renew 30 days before expiration with automatic web server reload after installation.

Many VPS users run containerized applications with Docker or Podman. SSL configuration for containers requires a different approach than traditional server setups. AnubizHost provides a pre-configured Traefik reverse proxy image that automatically obtains and renews Let's Encrypt certificates for any container with the appropriate labels, requiring zero manual SSL management.

For Docker Compose deployments, our documentation includes ready-to-use configurations for common patterns: Traefik as a reverse proxy with automatic SSL, Nginx Proxy Manager for a web-based certificate management interface, and Caddy for automatic HTTPS with minimal configuration. Copy our example configurations, adjust your domain names, and SSL works immediately.

Kubernetes users on our VPS plans can install cert-manager, which automates certificate issuance and renewal for Kubernetes Ingress resources. Our VPS images include Helm pre-installed for easy cert-manager deployment, and our DNS API integrates with cert-manager's DNS-01 solver for wildcard certificate issuance in Kubernetes environments.

With root access comes responsibility for SSL security. We recommend disabling TLS 1.0 and 1.1 on your VPS, using only TLS 1.2 and 1.3 with forward-secrecy cipher suites. Our default web server configurations include these settings, but if you customize your configuration, our documentation provides tested cipher suite strings for every major web server.

Store your private keys with restrictive file permissions (600) owned by root or the web server user. Never include private keys in version control, Docker images, or backup archives that are transmitted unencrypted. Our VPS security guide covers private key management best practices including hardware security module (HSM) integration for high-security environments.

Use our free SSL monitoring tool to continuously check your VPS certificate status. It alerts you if your certificate is approaching expiration, if your SSL configuration score drops below A+, or if a new vulnerability is discovered affecting your cipher suite or TLS version. Combined with auto-renewal, this monitoring provides comprehensive SSL assurance for your virtual server.