An SSL certificate is a digital certificate that verifies the identity of a website and allows an encrypted connection to be established. If no SSL is active on the website, you get a message such as “Your connection is not private” (chrome; edge), “Warning: possible security risk” (firefox).
On all our hosting packages you can request a free SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt. You can request (and renew) the SSL certificate yourself in the Plesk Control Panel. Once the SSL certificate is active, it is automatically renewed by us and you do not have to do anything else. The only exception to this are wildcard certificates, these have to be renewed manually.
Note: when you have transferred the domain to us or only changed the A record of the domain, a free SSL certificate for your website will be requested automatically within a maximum of 2 hours. You don't have to do anything else for this.
For illustration purposes, we use the domain cloud86example.com always replace it with your own domain in question. The domain is whatever is behind the @ sign in the mail address (@cloud86example.com) or entered in the url bar in the browser (after https://www. or https://).
Login on Plesk Control Panel
- In My Cloud86 (link), click in the left menu on My Services.
- Click the 3 dots behind the web hosting package you want to see in Plesk and click View Details.
- Under the heading Manage Webhosting (middle of the page), click on Websites & Domains.
- You will now be automatically logged into the Plesk Control Panel.
For the full manual with images, follow Login to Plesk
Requesting free SSL Certificate
- In Plesk, click on Websites & Domains in the left menu, find the (sub)domain for which you want to request an SSL/TLS certificate and click SSL/TLS certificates.
- In the new window, look for the option Install a free basic certificate provided by Let's Encrypt and click Install.
- The next screen allows you to configure your SSL certificate. First, enter the email address where notifications from Let's Encrypt about your certificate(s) can be sent to. Below we explain the different options. After you have checked the desired options, you can click on Get it free and your SSL certificate will be retrieved.
Options:
- Secure the domain name: This is for the basic website (without www)
- Include a "www" subdomain for the domain and each selected alias: This is for website with www in front of it (non-www is first option)
- Secure webmail on this domain: This is for the online webmail url
- Assign the certificate to the mail domain: This is for the email clients connecting to our server.
If the website and mail are hosted with us, it is best to check all options. If the website is not hosted with us, but with an external party such as Shopify or Wix, then you can only check the option Secure webmail on this domain. The rest will have to be secured at the external party.
Troubleshooting
When retrieving the SSL certificate, you may get an error message in the upper right corner. Below we list the most common error messages:
Unable to issue a Let's Encrypt certificate for a domain or its mail in Plesk: the DNS challenge used another IP address
At this moment the A record in the DNS settings does not yet refer to our server. This can happen if your domain is newly registered or moved and the new IP address of your domain is not yet known by all DNS servers around the world. Wait an hour or 2 and then try again.
Is this not a new domain or a transfer?
- If the domain is registered with us, check in My Cloud86 if the DNS Zone is active with us under the correct Web Hosting Package (Add Domain to DNS Zone).
- If the domain is not registered with us and the nameservers do not point to us, check if the A record with the name @ or just the domain name points to our server and there are no AAAA records with those names. This is because we do not support ipv6 addresses.
'cloud86example.com' DNS zone contains an AAAA record, but the domain is not assigned to an IPv6 address in Plesk.
In this case, the domain is probably not hosted with us and you are referring it from another party. That party uses IPv4 (A) and IPv6 (AAAA) records. We do not support IPv6 on our hosting so you will have to remove the AAAA records. Once you delete them, it may take up to 4 hours for this change to take effect everywhere. After that time, try again to request the SSL certificate.
If you need some help, you can always reach our support desk by email support@cloud86.io and on weekdays from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm you can also reach us by phone and via the chat in My Cloud86.