Renew SSL Certificate - Everything You Need to Know About

Renewing SSL Certificate is a must if you want to keep your website protected because installing an SSL certificate is not enough. If you’ve installed an SSL certificate on your web server, you’ve done a great job to ensure the security of your website and its visitors. A properly installed SSL certificate not only guarantees the security of data being exchanged between you and your visitors but also puts a solid foundation for the security of your website.

In this article, we’re going to tell you about everything that you should know about SSL certificate renewal.

How to Renew Your SSL Certificate?

By now it may be clear to you that timely renew SSL certificate is not a choice but a necessity. So now let’s see how you can do that easily. The steps vary depending on the CA (certificate authority) of your SSL certificate which you want to renew, but they look like this:

• Generate a Certificate Signing Request
• Choose your certificate
• Choose validity (i.e. one year, two years, three years, etc.)
• Sign in to your account and fill out all necessary details
• Apply your SSL Certificate Coupon, if any
• Review your order
• Make the payment
• Complete the configure process and approve the domain validation email. If you have selected organization or extended validation, then you need to submit business-related documents and third-party directory proof for valid business registration.
• Install the certificate back to your server.

Exact instructions for your CA can be found from their own websites. For instance, if you have a Comodo SSL certificate, you can find their renewal instructions on their site.

If you’ve bought your certificate from any other SSL Certificate Provider, and you need detailed instructions then you can search on their website. Otherwise, you can safely move ahead with the quick summary of the instructions we’ve explained above.

How to Renew SSL Certificate at a discount price?

Below listed popular brand coupons help you to collect the highest discount price for renewing your SSL certificate with popular and Cheap SSL certificate providers.

Why Should Renewing SSL Certificate?

Just like domains, SSL certificates also come with an expiry date. The price you pay for them allows your site to be validated and authenticated for a fixed period (I.e. one year, two years; depending on the duration for which you purchased the certificate). Therefore, it becomes necessary to renew your SSL certificate once the period of its validity has expired. There are serious consequences of not renewing your SSL certificate, which we’re going to explain in the next section.

What happens if you do not Renew SSL?

First all, your site starts loading over the default HTTP protocol, which is an insecure protocol for the security of your visitors. The data they send to your site can be stolen if your website is loading over HTTP. In addition to that, the other things that happen to your site on non-renewal of SSL certificate include:

• A ‘Not Secure’ label is shown before your URL in the address bar of web browsers. This affects your brand’s reputation negatively.
• Also, you’re given lower priority in Google’s search results because the company uses HTTPS as a ranking signal in its search engine ranking algorithms.

In general, the effects of an expired SSL certificate are not good. This can negatively affect your revenue more than you can imagine.

Why updating the certificate is not an option?

Many times, people think why SSL certificates can’t be simply updated instead of being renewed. The reason is… because the information contained in them is used for verification purposes by the web browsers and the certificate authority (CA). That information must remain up to date and 100% accurate all the time. That’s why CAs require you to renew SSL and re-install them instead of merely updating them.

The Best Time for Renewing SSL Certificate

The best time to renew your SSL certificate is before its expiry. You should keep an eye on when your certificate is going to expire and renew it before it expires to ensure continued protection. Ideally, you should get it renewed at least a week before it’s going to expire, and you should also try to purchase it for a duration longer than one year because it comes with a discount. And for earlier renewal of SSL certificate, some popular providers are also offering additional free months for SSL certificate validity. However, these are only best practices and suggestions. At the end of the day, it’s completely your choice as to how long-duration you choose and when you renew it.

Conclusion

So that’s what SSL certificate renewal is, and how you can renew your SSL certificate in a few simple steps. We also took a brief look at the consequences of not renewing your SSL certificate on time.