Let's Encrypt for Nationbuilder?

Issuance Tech
1

Hi there,
Are site-wide certificates from Let’s Encrypt available for websites hosted by Nationbuilder?
Please let me know ASAP!
Thank you SO MUCH :smile:
Taryn

2

I’m not sure I understand, what do you mean by " site-wide certificate" ?

3

Maybe just a certificate?

@tsblanchard, I’d suggest asking Nationbuilder support about this first. The easiest case would be if they had integration for it set up on their end.

If not, it might still be possible, but it depends a great deal on the kind of administrative access that they give customers over the site hosting.

4

Right now, Nationbuilder allows for https on donor pages (so where money is exchanging hands) but not for the entire site :frowning:
I’m wondering (hoping with all my heart!) that Let’s Encrypt would be able to provide a certificate for the entire website.
Hopefully this is a better explanation?

5

Nationbuilder offers https for thousands of dollars…which I can’t afford haha.
Would you be able to recommend what I should ask my Nationbuilder support about the kind of administrative access that would permit a Let’s Encrypt certificate integration?
Thanks so much!
Best,
Taryn

6

Hi @tsblanchard, if Nationbuilder is charging more for HTTPS, I’m guessing that charge probably applies for any use of HTTPS, regardless of where you get the certificate from. While the Let’s Encrypt certificate is always free of charge for all users and all uses, we can’t control whether a hosting provider charges extra for HTTPS.

You could see whether your Nationbuilder administrative settings somehow allow you to upload a 3rd-party certificate without paying thousands of dollars, but I’m not super-optimistic in this situation. I think if they’re charging thousands of dollars, they’re probably viewing it as charging for the HTTPS support, not just for the certificate!

There is a less-than-ideal compromise possibility where you would point your main domain at a CDN like CloudFlare and then they would point to the Nationbuilder site as the origin server for your site. Then your users would see an HTTPS site even though the connection between the CDN and your site would be unencrypted. This is a less-than-ideal compromise because people who can tamper with Internet backbone connections and data centers can still tamper with your users’ connections, but your users are protected against people “nearby” (like other people in a café, or whoever controls the particular Internet connection that an individual user uses).

It’s also possible that Nationbuilder would be unhappy with this solution somehow.

1 Like
7

Hi @schoen,
Thanks very much for your quick response. I’m going to follow up with Nationbuilder with this information in mind.
All the best,
Taryn

8

Hi Taryn

When using services such as nationbuilder it can be problematic as you are limited to what you can do.

You are essentially using Software as a Service (SaaS) and and such the infrastructure components are controlled by the vendor (nationbuilder)

Let’s encrypt is not able to issue a certificate as it does not own the domain. Nationbuilder can choose to utilise letsencrypt for client such as yourself and issue certificates for you but because they own the server it’s up to them how much control they give to clients (and whether it is free or not)

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