Hello,
I'm tearing my hair out to get an ssl certificate for a simple html informational site, just not to scare away my possible readers.
My site is hosted on google cloud. I have already tried to set up (and successfully) certbot, with the help of google assistance, the device going through the creation of a virtual machine, all this to realize that having creating a virtual instance was costing me a lot of money every month, and the only solution support found was to remove everything. I find myself suddenly at zero point. Is Certbot truly free in the sense that it requires a virtual instance that is constantly running and therefore costs money to run?
Thank you for telling me the easiest and cheapest solution to have an ssl certificate for a simple html site ...
url of my website : www.benoit-baudrin.com
I have no idea what a "virtual instance" is exactly, but Certbot is just a "simple" Python program which does not require such a thing of itself. However, maybe Google Cloud requires it? I dunno, I don't have experience with Google Cloud..
Certbot is indeed FREE: It is as @Osiris says a python program, designed to provide FREE security certificates to you for up to 90 days. There is no "virtual instance" needed, and you can run certbot and register as many domains as you want.
I use acme.sh and it is another client, but it will do the same thing as certbot, but acme.sh is written in bash shell I have 4 domains and it works well
(To Clarify, I DO own my own domains, and my own server, so I am able to run Certbot or another Client, so I have discretion as to what I do)
Certbot is designed for the use case of you already having a server that's serving your content. If you're using some sort of "shared hosting" where you don't have your own server, but just upload files somewhere and they're being served, then you need your hosting provider to handle the setting up of HTTPS and getting a certificate. I'm not familiar with Google's hosting services myself, but I bet they have something for it somewhere and you just need to check the right box.
There are a few services you can use for free hosting of a simple html website.
I quite like using GitHub for this, you create a GitHub account, start a new 'repo' (repository), upload your files then turn on GitHub Pages in settings. This gives you a website at the github domain.
You can then follow the instructions to setup a custom domain and https (you edit your DNS to point to your website name to github as a CNAME), then they can automatically set a certificate for your site, with your custom domain.
Any time you want to edit your site you just change the files on github.
There are many other free website hosts but that's the one I use if I don't want to run my own server (I have too many servers!).
So I am strangely in a mouse hole, because I actually do not have a server and I just use google cloud as a host for my pages. However, the solution indicated by their tutorial and the after-sales service team involves the creation of a virtual machine instance which acts as an intermediary, but which costs money to rent (which I realized afterwards cut).
I made the mistake of choosing google cloud at the start which is a real gas plant and which does not suit the small need I have. However I like the fact that I can freely and easily upload my pages to the cloud, and I also archive data with them (they have the equivalent of amazon glacier in much more user frendly with equivalent prices and ease of unarchiving).
I think I will simply go through a third party certifier....
In any case, the google cloud service is interesting for tech savies, because it brings together a lot of services and technology up to AI in a single platform ...
How would your Google Cloud website be called, if it didn't have that "virtual machine instance"? (Google has so many options, I don't know what is what..)
Because if I look at Google Cloud consoleeverything uses a virtual machine? So I'm not sure how Let's Encrypt might cost you more than a regular website, if everything requires a virtual machine anyway.. Or am I missing something here?
Maybe it has something to do that Google offers a single instance for free (Google Cloud 免费计划) but you pay for more than one instance?
Any usage above Free Tier usage limits is automatically billed at standard rates.
by default for the storage of my site, it is not necessary for me to have a virtual instance, but necessary if I want to launch the program which generates the ssl certificate, and then every request on my site goes through this vm instance.
The google offers are tricky because at the beginning they offer you some credit for free, but then as soon as you have exceeded this credit, you realize that there is a charge that runs for renting a virtual server (in the case of the vm instance). Luckily I shouted when I discovered this and they reimbursed me, because the irony is that they are the ones who advised me to put this in place without telling me that it cost like ... 10 euros per month !!
This site mentions the usage of "Google Cloud Load Balancing" for adding a SSL certificate (probably not Let's Encrypt): Hosting a static website | Cloud Storage | Google Cloud It does not mention costs directly however.
I'm not sure there is any other method of adding HTTPS to your site as it's current configuration. As I said, IMO that whole Google Cloud stuff is a gigantic minefield of cloudy information and indeed next you know it, you're having your bill filled with $$$$$..
Perhaps more complicated but you could use a CDN like Cloudflare to front your google docs origin. There is a free tier from them for personal use. https://www.cloudflare.com/plans/#overview
That includes a certificate at least for the CDN edge out to the client. I don't know what connections are possible between the edge and the google cloud docs.
I have experience with Amazon CloudFront (another CDN) using its S3 storage as origin server. You can have static website pages and docs in S3 much like you describe here. CloudFront manages the certs automatically for its edge to the client. And, it has https connection possibility to anything in S3 so it is https from end to end. This model is what you could get with Cloudflare and Google docs - I am guessing.
I do not have experience setting it up it just seems like it would work like that.
Yes that's what I intend to do finally, I found a supplier (www.httpcs.com) who can generate SSL certificates for free ... I wait for it to provide me with the certificate and I will try to enter it in this way.
Well yes, there is the choice of choosing a ssl Trustsign, which is free but must be renewed every 90 days. Unfortunately I have already exhausted the offer, so I will try with Comodo.
I have 4 domains and it works well 
