I am new and need help. I didn’t find my host on the list of approved host. I need an ssl certificate for my site , how do I go about it?
Hi @cryptopay,
What kind of hosting environment do you have? What kind of familiarity with system administration do you have?
Thanks for the prompt response.
I hosted with “pythonanywere” and bought the domain name from “godaddy”.
The website was built by a friend of mine using “python”
According to the PythonAnywhere forum at
https://www.pythonanywhere.com/forums/topic/11640/
their support can add certificates to your site if you obtain them elsewhere. This is not as convenient as other hosting providers’ support for Let’s Encrypt, particularly because our certificates expire in 3 months, so you will have to repeat this process at least 4 times per year, and ideally more often to be safe. Some other hosting providers have automated this or allowed users to use their own software tools to automate it, which we definitely recommend in preference to this sort of manual process.
The easiest way to get a certificate for this purpose is to use a tool like
This is a web browser-based client for Let’s Encrypt that walks you through all of the necessary steps inside your browser, and then lets you save the associated files at the end to give to your hosting provider. You will need to be able to create a file on your web site at a specified location in order to prove that you really control the site when requesting the certificate.
OK sir.
Please can you refer me to an affordable host (or give me a list to pick
from) that has automated your SSL certification. My hosting agreement with
python will expire in a week.
We don't have reviews (and I don't think we want to get into that kind of complexity and potential disagreement), but there is an updated list at
The level of integration varies from automated to optional (e.g. by clicking on a Let's Encrypt button in a web hosting control panel), but all of these providers have done some kind of work to make integration convenient.
Please what is the difference between this two group of providers in the
attached photo.
Which group is preferable to pick from?.
Hi @schoen, how are you.
I’m topbidmate
I am new to letsencrypt.org
Can you please explain the process of obtaining Certbot for me? So I can use it on my website?
Or is there link to information explaining how to obtain a Certbot.
I’m currently with Site5 web hosting and I believe they use Apache Servers and I have access via a control panel.
I currently have an SSL Cert from Godady but the cost is pricing me out of using SSL, The same applies with my web hosting and I am currently looking at my options for new hosting. I will definitely check out letsencrypt list of hosting providers who support letsencrypt.
Hi @cryptopay,
The people at the top of the list are being described as doing something more helpful, which is giving customers a certificate automatically and setting it up without the customers having to do anything. For the larger group, it might be possible that customers have to click on something in a control panel to choose to obtain the certificate, or that the customers otherwise have to do something to request it.
We don't actively confirm whether the information in this list is up-to-date; it's all based on things that other readers of this forum have said based on their most recent interactions with these hosting companies. So it's possible that other hosting companies have also made their Let's Encrypt support totally automatic, but that the list hasn't been updated to reflect that.
Hi @topbidmate,
Certbot is a particular program that's primarily meant for people who administer their own servers from the command line. It is only one of many ways to get a certificate from Let's Encrypt, although it's very convenient for people in its target audience. 
... and perhaps very inconvenient for people not in its target audience.
To learn about obtaining and using Certbot, you can visit
However, Certbot isn't right for all prospective users of Let's Encrypt. The Let's Encrypt Getting Started page talks a little bit about this:
If you want an experience that is relatively similar to the GoDaddy one (but without payment!), you should probably use
This is a third-party-created web-based interface to Let's Encrypt services that works entirely in your browser. You will have to prove your control over your domain name(s) by creating a file on your site at a specified location. At the end, you'll get a number of PEM files that you can upload and install on your site, or ask your hosting provider's support to install for you; those files correspond to the files you would get from any other certificate authority, but with Let's Encrypt you don't have to pay anything for this service.
The thing that I've mentioned that can be quite inconvenient about this is that Let's Encrypt certificates expire after three months, so you would have to repeat this process quite frequently. We really suggest that the service is best used with some kind of automation system in which a computer program gets the certificates for you. Certbot is in that category, for people who administer their own servers on the command line (often VPS customers). For other people, the best case is generally convincing their hosting provider to automate Let's Encrypt support, or switching to one of the providers from the list we've been discussing, since they've already done so.
In some cases, if you have an existing provider that gives you a control panel like cPanel, there might already be Let's Encrypt support implemented in that control panel and the hosting provider might have made that option available to you. In that case, you'd just have to find the Let's Encrypt option inside your existing control panel and turn it on! However, I guess a lot of people who find their way to this forum to ask have already looked at their hosting setup and seen that they don't currently have an option like that in their existing hosting environments.
@schoen Thank you for your reply,
As it stands and as I mentioned before, I can’t afford to keep my current web hosting or SSL Cert active but I do want to keep the website online, so I am on the lookout for new web hosting and SSL options.
Thank you again,
I will keep letsencrypt.org in the back of my mind and I will checkout the list of web hosting you have.
With kind regards
topbidmate
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