How to Get a Free SSL Certificate From Let’s Encrypt (Step by Step)

In April 2016, the non-profit certificate authority Let’s Encrypt launched, providing free SSL certificates for websites.

certbot renew

certbot certificates

challenges: http-01

certbot –nginx

/etc/letsencrypt/live/<domain name>

  • privkey.pem, which is the private key for your certificate
  • fullchain.pem, which is the certificate file
  • chain.pem, which is used or OCSP stapling in Nginx >= 1.3.7
  • cert.pem, which break many server configurations and shouldn’t be used