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We get a lot of questions about how to use Let’s Encrypt on GoDaddy. If you use GoDaddy shared web hosting, it’s currently very difficult to install a Let’s Encrypt certificate, so we don’t currently recommend using our certificates with GoDaddy. That’s because GoDaddy doesn’t support the ACME protocol for automated certificate issuance and renewal. Instead, GoDaddy offers automated renewal with their own certificates, which are an added-cost feature.
We don’t recommend using Let’s Encrypt certificates on hosting providers that don’t directly implement the ACME protocol, because it means you can’t fully automate renewals. We think automated renewals are a very important part of using certificates. Using software to automate renewal makes it much less likely that your certificate will expire without being replaced. If your certificate expires, it’s very frustrating for your users because they can’t access your site.
Because we believe so strongly in automated renewal, we design our certificates to be used with ACME automation. A Let’s Encrypt certificate is meant to be renewed automatically after 60 days, and will stop working after 90 days if it isn’t renewed.
If, after reviewing the above problems, you decided that you’d like to try maintaining a Let’s Encrypt certificate on GoDaddy shared hosting, GoDaddy provides instructions. Keep in mind, following these instructions is time-consuming, and you are expected to do it every 60 days (not every 90 days as described on the linked page).