Hi @offthewall,
That’s interesting — the message from hostwhitelabel.com appears to be based on that service’s own support for Let’s Encrypt (which is almost sure to be separate from what you did using gethttpsforfree.com). This message suggests the use of some kind of control panel on that site to get certificates.
Is hostwhitelabel.com the hosting provider that you’re using right now, or the one that was being used before?
To try to summarize things (I hope this will help):
When you “renew” a certificate, you are really getting a new certificate with the same contents (but different expiration date). The expiration date of a certificate is written into the certificate itself, so there isn’t anything that can be done to make it last longer or change it retroactively. When a hosting provider or software tool “renews” a certificate, they request a new certificate with the same contents, obtain it, and then install it into some kind of server application in place of the previous one.
Some hosting providers have their own support for Let’s Encrypt, where the hosting provider will request and install certificates on behalf of the customer. This can be made very easy or automatic so that the customer has little or nothing to do. This seems to be the kind of support that hostwhitelabel.com has implemented (but if that’s no longer the hosting provider that you’re using, that isn’t necessarily helpful to you!).
When you use a service like gethttpsforfree.com, you are getting a certificate for yourself (outside of and separate from any hosting service). The end result is that you have a copy of the new certificate in PEM (text file) format on your own computer. You can then upload it to various kinds of hosting service that are able to import certificates in this format (which is a common feature for a lot of hosting plans and a lot of kinds of server software). However, you have to explicitly take that step in order to make use of the certificate you obtained: the copy you have on your computer at the end of the process is for you to use, and isn’t automatically installed or deployed anywhere.
Using gethttpsforfree.com is an alternative to automatic renewal, because gethttpsforfree.com is a standalone service for people who want to obtain certificates one at a time in this way. It isn’t integrated directly with any hosting provider or service and isn’t automated in any way. It basically tries to replicate the experience that many users had with paid certificate authorities before Let’s Encrypt — only without charging money for the process.
If you want automatic renewal of any Let’s Encrypt software, you have to use some kind of tool that supports that, which could be a hosting company’s control panel, or could be our own Certbot software, or several other alternatives. Normally it will have to be closely integrated with your web server in some way, effectively being software that runs regularly on the web server (though proficient system administrators could also have it run elsewhere and then automate the process of periodically copying the new certificate onto the web server).
I’m pretty confident that the e-mail notification you received is separate from and independent of what you did with gethttpsforfree.com and is referring to a different certificate.