Glad you got it working! 
You took exactly the road I thought you might. 
If you don't have AutoSSL or such installed in your cPanel to manage certificates and lack root access to the webserver then you need an ACME client capable of acquiring certificates for you that can manage the time consuming and tedious tasks of the certification process. This is where CertSage enters to handle the entire process of acquiring your certificate by only requiring you to submit an email address (for expiration notifications), your domain name, and any subdomains you wish to include in your certificate. Once CertSage has saved your certificate and its private key directly to your server, you then install them as you see fit. The idea here is time savings and reduced hassle.
If you have any questions, just let me know.