Support for Network Solutions?

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Please fill out the fields below so we can help you better. Note: you must provide your domain name to get help. Domain names for issued certificates are all made public in Certificate Transparency logs (e.g. https://crt.sh/?q=example.com), so withholding your domain name here does not increase secrecy, but only makes it harder for us to provide help.

My domain is: 4kit.org
It's owned by Network Solutions, and they have their own HTTPS support that they sell. But I want to use Let's Encrypt.

HOWEVER, I don't see Network Solutions even listed on the hosting providers page (Does My Hosting Provider Offer HTTPS?). Anyone know if they support us or not? Maybe I can find out and update the providers page?

I ran this command:

It produced this output:

My web server is (include version):

The operating system my web server runs on is (include version):

My hosting provider, if applicable, is:

I can login to a root shell on my machine (yes or no, or I don't know):

I'm using a control panel to manage my site (no, or provide the name and version of the control panel):

The version of my client is (e.g. output of certbot --version or certbot-auto --version if you're using Certbot):

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That really would be a question for them. What kind of hosting plan do you have with them?

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Evidently Network Solutions would rather make money than support a 3rd party like Let's Encrypt.

So it looks like we need to update the hosting providers page.
Anyone want to help me with that?

Their bot pointed me to this blurb:
"Network Solutions does not specifically support Let's Encrypt SSL certificates. Instead, we offer our own range of SSL certificates that you can purchase and manage through your account.
Our SSL certificates come with various validation types and easy setup through the Account Manager, including domain validation, organization validation, and extended validation options.
If you want to secure your site with SSL via Network Solutions, you can purchase and configure SSL certificates directly through us."

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Getting a certificate usually isn't really the problem. With shared hosting it's the installation step that is the most restricting. Your hosting provider needs to somehow enable the users to install a third party certificate. There may or may not be a way to do that.

If it turns out to be impossible I recommend changing hosting provider which actually lives in 2026 and offers free certificates with every plan.

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That website is run by the EFF and the page you linked to has instructions at the bottom for submitting corrections.

I am assuming you just missed that as the instructions are pretty clear.

The EFF maintains Certbot which is a popular ACME Client for getting certs from Let's Encrypt which is an ACME Server run by the ISRG. There are many ACME Clients and a variety of ACME Servers.

You might find this intro useful too:

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Network Solutions shared hosting doesn't give you shell access or the ability to run certbot, so you're stuck with their paid certs unless you move DNS or hosting. The practical workaround if you want to stay on Network Solutions hosting: point your DNS to Cloudflare (free tier), enable their proxy, and you get free SSL termination without touching the origin server at all. Your site serves over HTTPS to visitors and Network Solutions never needs to know. If you do have a VPS or dedicated plan with shell access, certbot with the dns-01 challenge works fine regardless of registrar. You'd just need API access to wherever your DNS is hosted to automate renewal.

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Not necessarily. But alternatives are most likely manual, unless they have cPanel and e.g. certsage is an option.

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To summarize, Network Solutions isn't listed in the LE Hosting Providers page, and this needs to be fixed. It should likely say "No HTTPS Support", but the situation is complicated enough that I'm unsure this is correct.

Network Solutions (NS) is pretty mainstream so I'm surprised that there's no entry in our documentation for NS. My AI says "it manages millions of domains. However, it is often considered more expensive and less user-friendly than modern competitors like GoDaddy or Namecheap".

NS "Unix Starter" hosting does not appear to include root access, so that blocks straightford soutions -- like installing support for certbot? So we're stuck with their paid certs unless we move DNS or hosting.

A good workaround to stay on Network Solutions hosting: point your DNS to Cloudflare (free tier), enable their proxy, and you get free SSL termination without touching the origin server at all. Your site serves over HTTPS to visitors and Network Solutions never needs to know.

I'd prefer to get off NS altogether, but the Cloudflare workaround seems like a reasonable tactical approach.