# Dehydrated vs certbot

**URL:** <https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/dehydrated-vs-certbot/218461>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [May 15, 2024, 2:41pm UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/dehydrated-vs-certbot/218461 "2024-05-15T14:41:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![honest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/9f8e36/32.png) [@honest](https://community.letsencrypt.org/u/honest)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 2:41pm UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/dehydrated-vs-certbot/218461/1 "2024-05-15T14:41:21Z")

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> **[dehydrated](https://dehydrated.io/)**
>
> letsencrypt/acme client implemented as a shell-script – just add water

We have been recommend this over certbot. Do any other users recommend or have experience of this?

Is it better than certbot?

Thanks!

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**Author:** ![jvanasco](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/user_avatar/community.letsencrypt.org/jvanasco/32/55900_2.png) [@jvanasco](https://community.letsencrypt.org/u/jvanasco)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 3:03pm UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/dehydrated-vs-certbot/218461/2 "2024-05-15T15:03:56Z")

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There are hundreds of clients. Certbot is the most popular - it was the first, developed in a partnership between EFF and ISRG, and aims to support the widest audience.

Different users have different needs.

Dehydrated is well respected and liked, and considered one of the major clients. However, it is not currently as actively developed like Certbot and some other clients are. This is most likely because it is stable and the maintainers consider it to be "feature complete" for now. There have not been many changes to the ACME process and LetsEncrypt implementation over the past few years - even 6 year old ACME v2 clients still work flawlessly.

The big changes that Certbot and other clients have been working on are:

- Certbot- supporting Apache/Nginx/etc
- All - new RFC specs, such as the ARI ([Discontinuing support for ACME clients using draft-ietf-acme-ari-01 - #2 by beautifulentropy](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/discontinuing-support-for-acme-clients-using-draft-ietf-acme-ari-01/215126/2))

Other than that, the most popular clients tend to be well written, and well written clients typically support proper handling of alternate chains, async order finalization, updated error messages, etc.

TLDR: If you have expertise and knowledge with dehydrated within your network, it is an excellent option.

EDIT: typo. changed "actively" to "as actively"

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**Author:** ![Osiris](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/839c29/32.png) [@Osiris](https://community.letsencrypt.org/u/Osiris)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 4:05pm UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/dehydrated-vs-certbot/218461/3 "2024-05-15T16:05:57Z")

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> [@jvanasco](#):
>
> However, it is not currently actively developed like Certbot and some other clients are. This is most likely because it is stable and the maintainers consider it to be "feature complete" for now.

It's also not "dead" or "archived". A few months back a bug was fixed 🙂 So even without it being actively devved upon, it should be considerd "active" and a worthy ACME client 🙂

It would be nice if someone would could write up a table with features et cetera, as you often see on Wikipedia list pages.

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**Author:** ![jvanasco](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/user_avatar/community.letsencrypt.org/jvanasco/32/55900_2.png) [@jvanasco](https://community.letsencrypt.org/u/jvanasco)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 4:29pm UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/dehydrated-vs-certbot/218461/4 "2024-05-15T16:29:08Z")

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> [@Osiris](#):
>
> It's also not "dead" or "archived". A few months back a bug was fixed 🙂 So even without it being actively devved upon, it should be considerd "active" and a worthy ACME client 🙂

Yes, that was a typo. I updated it to read "as actively developed" not "actively developed".

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**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/original/3X/c/a/ca6c06ea1ea201324bba7048c6841ce60236468d.png) [@system](https://community.letsencrypt.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [June 14, 2024, 4:29pm UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/dehydrated-vs-certbot/218461/5 "2024-06-14T16:29:44Z")

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Closed on June 14, 2024, 4:29pm UTC

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