Let's Encrypt
Let's Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority (CA) provided by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG). It allows website owners to obtain trusted SSL/TLS certificates for their domains, enabling secure HTTPS connections, without the usual cost or manual administrative…
Key facts
- First appeared
- 2015
- Category
- technology
- Problem solved
- Let's Encrypt solved the long-standing problem of expensive, complex, and manually intensive SSL/TLS certificate acquisition and renewal. Before Let's Encrypt, securing a website with HTTPS was a barrier for many due to the costs associated with commercial Certificate Authorities and the intricate, often confusing, process of generating Certificate Signing Requests (CSRs), validating domain ownership, and installing certificates.
- Platforms
- macOS (for development and specific server setups), Any server environment capable of running an ACME client and serving web content, Linux (server-side, most common for Certbot), Windows (via WSL or specific client integrations)
Related technologies
Notable users
- Millions of individual website owners and bloggers
- Hosting providers and CDNs (e.g., Cloudflare, Akamai)
- Large enterprises and technology companies (e.g., WordPress.com, Automattic, OVHcloud, DigitalOcean)
- Small and medium businesses