Last night I was finally successful in my search for how to use Let’s Encrypt certificates to enable SSL/TLS on my websites, hosted on GoDaddy using their Deluxe Linux Hosting (with AutoSSL). The last piece of that is of utmost importance as you will soon see.
For those unaware, GoDaddy does let you install a Let’s Encrypt certificate
in their cPanel UI. However, this does not include auto-rotation via certbot or other ACME client. Why Godaddy continues to insist
you pay them $300+/year for SSL certificates (with auto-rotation that “they” perform) is beyond me. However, I was determined that there
must be a way to add SSL without paying an engineer $300/year to setup a cron job for my certificates.
It was by a stroke of luck while searching other hosting providers that I noticed my Godaddy account is a Deluxe Linux Hosting acocunt
which was listed directly next to one, of the same price, called Deluxe Linux Hosting (With AutoSSL). When I did some searching into what
exactly Godaddy AutoSSL was I was shocked to find that it was exactly what I had been looking for!
After converting my account to the Delux Linux Hosting (with AutoSSL), which is the same price, I was able to simply select the domains I wanted
an SSL certificate on and click the Run AutoSSL button in cPanel which created and applied the SSL certificate to those domains and also enabled
HTTPS redirects on them.
What really was impressive was that, upon inspecting the certificates, it does appear they are, in fact, Let’s Encrypt certs! Take that GoDaddy!