The Let’s Encrypt project has announced that they will sunset expiration warning emails on June 4, 2025.
They cited several good reasons for the change:
- It costs then tens of thousands of dollars a year. Sending large quantities of email these days means using a third-party service or building similar infrastructure to handle all the anti-spam defenses major email providers have in place.
- It adds complexity to their infrastructure, to track and send those emails.
- They have to maintain records of millions of email addresses, which not only a cost but also out of line with their privacy-focused organization.
The good news is that these emails are largely unnecessary. If you use certbot or similar, your certs are automatically renewed. I only get emails from Let’s Encrypt when I’ve turned off a site and the renewal is no longer automated. In other words, 100% of the emails I get about this are unnecessary.
But If You Want to Monitor Your Certs
There are many monitoring products that offer monitoring of SSL expirations as part of a larger suite of monitoring options. Here’s a couple to look at if you don’t already have a solution:
- Hetrix Tools has a free forever tier
- Uptime Kuma is something you can self-host or throw on the docker host of your choice
Or you can go truly Low-End and write your own script. It’s trivially simple. I posted a quick 3-liner on LowEndTalk, which you could adapt.
Related Posts:
LowEndBoxTV: Free Power Toys for Your Linux Server!
Uptime Kuma: Your New Favorite Self-Hosted Uptime Monitoring Tool
More On Installing And Configuring Certbun For Use With Apache
Certbun, An Easier Alternative To Certbot, From Porkbun
How To Fix A CertBot CAA Error Blaming Your Nameservers
Four Step VPS Webserver: Debian, Apache, Certbot, And Let's Encrypt!
I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.
I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308
the real reason they are doing this is so they can afford these stupid 6 day certs they are pushing.