Since 15 March 2026 the maximum lifetime of a public SSL certificate is 200 days, dropping to 100 days in March 2027 and 47 days in 2029. If your certificate is renewed by hand, or bought once a year from a reseller, it will run out more often, and each lapse shows visitors a full-page security warning. Automatic renewal is the answer.
Who this affects
- Sites with certificates installed manually by a developer
- Paid certificates bought for a year and installed by hand
- Servers and devices outside your main hosting (booking systems, mail servers, NAS boxes)
Most managed hosts and platforms such as Shopify, Wix and Squarespace already renew automatically, so their sites aren't affected.
What to do
- List every domain and subdomain that uses a certificate.
- Switch each one to automatic renewal (Let's Encrypt or your provider's equivalent).
- Set up expiry monitoring so you hear about failures before customers do.
We can audit and automate your certificates: SSL, domain and DNS fixes.
