Letsencrypt
SSL & TLS certificates software
Confidentiality software
- Features
- Ease of use
- Ease of management
- Quality of support
- Affordability
- Market presence
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Completely free
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Free version
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- Information technology and software
- Public sector and nonprofit organizations
- Education and training
What is Letsencrypt
Let’s Encrypt is a certificate authority (CA) service that issues domain-validated (DV) SSL/TLS certificates to enable HTTPS and other TLS-secured services. It targets website operators, DevOps teams, and hosting/platform providers that want automated certificate issuance and renewal using the ACME protocol. The service is commonly used with ACME clients (for example, Certbot) and supports automation workflows for large numbers of domains. It focuses on short-lived certificates and automated lifecycle management rather than paid validation levels or managed enterprise PKI features.
No-cost DV certificate issuance
Let’s Encrypt issues DV certificates without per-certificate fees, which reduces direct certificate procurement costs. This is practical for organizations managing many domains or frequently changing infrastructure. It supports common TLS use cases for public-facing websites and services where DV validation is sufficient.
ACME-based automation support
Let’s Encrypt is designed around the ACME protocol, enabling automated issuance and renewal. This fits CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code workflows and reduces manual certificate operations. Many servers, load balancers, and hosting platforms support ACME integrations, which simplifies deployment in heterogeneous environments.
Widely trusted public CA
Let’s Encrypt certificates chain to widely trusted roots via ISRG, providing broad client compatibility for standard web and TLS clients. This makes it suitable for general internet-facing services without requiring custom trust distribution. The service is commonly integrated into hosting and platform tooling, which can reduce setup effort for standard scenarios.
DV only; no EV/OV
Let’s Encrypt issues only domain-validated certificates and does not provide organization validation (OV) or extended validation (EV). Organizations with compliance requirements or policies that mandate OV/EV must use a different CA. It also does not provide identity vetting artifacts that some procurement and audit processes expect.
Short validity increases reliance
Certificates are short-lived, so reliable automation is effectively required to avoid outages from expiration. Environments with limited automation capability or constrained change control may find lifecycle operations harder to manage. If renewal fails due to DNS/HTTP challenge issues, service disruption risk increases.
Limited enterprise management features
Let’s Encrypt does not provide a full enterprise certificate management console with advanced policy controls, delegated administration, or detailed inventory/reporting comparable to dedicated certificate management platforms. Organizations typically need to build or adopt separate tooling for governance, monitoring, and audit trails. Support is primarily community and documentation driven rather than contractual enterprise support.
Plan & Pricing
| Plan | Price | Key features & notes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 (no charge) | Domain-validated (DV) TLS certificates issued free of charge via the ACME protocol; automated issuance and renewal; wildcard certificates available (DNS-01 challenge required); historically 90-day certificate lifetimes (industry/LE plans to shorten lifetimes per published roadmap); Let's Encrypt does not offer OV or EV certificates; service funded by donations and corporate sponsorships; rate limits apply. |
Seller details
Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) — Let’s Encrypt
San Francisco, CA, USA
2013
Non-profit
https://letsencrypt.org/
https://x.com/letsencrypt
https://www.linkedin.com/company/internet-security-research-group/
