Free SSL certificates you never have to renew
HTTPS is switched on for every address the moment it goes live. The certificate is issued and renewed at our gateway, so there is nothing to install on your server and no expiry date to put in your calendar.
Get started freeWhy a free certificate is as secure as a paid one
The padlock in the browser means the same thing whoever issued the certificate: the connection is encrypted and the certificate matches the domain. Let's Encrypt certificates use the same TLS encryption as certificates that cost $50 a year.
Paid certificates mostly add paperwork checks on the company behind the site (OV and EV validation) and a warranty. Browsers stopped showing that difference years ago, which is why most of the web now runs on free certificates.
Certificates are getting shorter, so renewal has to be automatic
Public SSL certificates used to last up to 398 days. Since March 15, 2026 the maximum is 200 days. It drops to 100 days in March 2027 and to 47 days in March 2029, under a rule the CA/Browser Forum voted through in 2025.
Let's Encrypt is going further: its default certificates move from 90 days to 64 days in February 2027 and to 45 days in February 2028. Renewing by hand every few weeks isn't realistic. One missed renewal takes a site offline behind a scary browser warning.
How DomainDock handles it
Our gateway holds a wildcard certificate for *.digitalweb.host from Let's Encrypt and renews it well before it expires. Every address you create is covered the second it goes live.
Visitors always connect to the gateway over HTTPS. The gateway then talks to your server over HTTPS if it supports it, or plain HTTP if it does not. That means a fresh VPS running an app on port 3000 gets a valid padlock without you running certbot.
Questions people ask
No. The certificate lives at the DomainDock gateway. Your app can listen on plain HTTP and visitors still get HTTPS.
No. Every route is served over HTTPS, because browsers mark plain HTTP pages as not secure and many features (service workers, secure cookies, OAuth redirects) need HTTPS.
Free certificates for your own domain are available directly from Let's Encrypt with tools like certbot or a server like Caddy. On DomainDock, certificates cover addresses under digitalweb.host.
There is no wait. The wildcard certificate already covers your address, so HTTPS works as soon as the route is active, usually within a minute of creating it.