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There were free options. I think the biggest benefits to Let's Encrypt are the EFF's clout and the simplicity.
by jonlucc 11y ago
There were free options. I think the biggest benefits to Let's Encrypt are the EFF's clout and the simplicity.
- toyg 11y agoNo there were not. Free options meant untrusted certificates or short-lived certificates that could not be renewed. LE made SSL free, trusted and long-term. You could have made it twice as hard to do the initial setup and people would have jumped at the opportunity regardless.
- pfg 11y agoStartSSL and WoSign have been offering free, publicly trusted certificates with one year lifetimes (and the ability to renew for free) for quite some time. The former doesn't allow commercial usage, while the latter operates in China. That's probably why it wasn't an option for a lot of people. (That, and the terrible UX at least in StartSSL's case.)
- _ak 11y agoStartSSL isn't free. They charge for certificate revocation.
- beefhash 11y agoFurthermore, their free certificates cannot be used for commercial purposes.
- mehrdada 11y agoI don't know why your comment is downvoted -- this is acutally a legitimate issue mentioned in their terms of service.
- nailer 11y agoStartSSL generally don't mention their terms, so a lot of the use of 'StartSSL Free' is commercial. People don't like to hear they've been misled (and shoot the messenger).
- vsl 11y agoThey actually started policing this and refuse to renew a certificate if they decide it's a commercial use. Happened to me and rather than argue with them (it wasn't), I bought a $5 one at ssls.com...
- mehrdada 11y agoWhile I agree LetsEncrypt is awesome, the certificates are actually shorter-lived (90 days), I believe, than the former CAs that issued certs for free (e.g. StartSSL) that offered a year of validity. The rationale is replacing the keys sooner since you can easily do it automatically with LE.
- IgorPartola 11y agoI used to use Wossl and StartSSL before for lots of little personal projects. I recently switched everything over to LE. I am looking forward to switching other projects to it too, such as ones for clients where we had to pay for wildcard certs in the past. Not having to mark the calendar to renew certs every year is going to be really nice. Incidentally, does anyone have a good way to integrate LE with EC2's load balancers?
- iancarroll 11y agoAmazon operates a free CA (Amazon Certificate Manager) for use with ELB and CloudFront.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]