Let's Encrypt — free HTTPS for every website

HTTPS certificates used to cost hundreds of dollars per year. Setup was manual and painful. Let’s Encrypt changed the rules: automatic, free DV certificates for every domain. HTTPS for all our projects — finally, no more excuses.

Why HTTPS everywhere¶

Google favors HTTPS in rankings. Chrome marks HTTP pages as “Not Secure”. HTTP/2 requires HTTPS. And of course — protecting user data. In 2016, plain HTTP has no place on the web.

Certbot: automation¶

# Let's Encrypt — free HTTPS for every website
sudo apt-get install certbot python-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d example.com -d www.example.com

# Automatic renewal (cron)
0 0 1 * * certbot renew --quiet

Certbot automatically configures Nginx, obtains a certificate via the ACME protocol and sets up a cron job for renewal every 3 months. The whole process takes a minute.

Wildcard certificates¶

Let’s Encrypt plans wildcard certificates (*.example.com) — not yet available, but individual certificates for subdomains work reliably.

Docker integration¶

For Docker environments we use nginx-proxy with letsencrypt-nginx-proxy-companion. Automatic container detection, automatic certificates. Zero-effort HTTPS.

No more excuses for HTTP¶

With Let’s Encrypt there is no reason to run anything over HTTP. Free, automatic, reliable. Deploy HTTPS on all your projects — now.