this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2025
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Let's Encrypt Ending Support for Expiration Notification Emails (letsencrypt.org)
submitted 16 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/technology
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Since its inception, Let’s Encrypt has been sending expiration notification emails to subscribers that have provided an email address to us. We will be ending this service on June 4, 2025. The decision to end this service is the result of the following factors:

  • Over the past 10 years more and more of our subscribers have been able to put reliable automation into place for certificate renewal.
  • Providing expiration notification emails means that we have to retain millions of email addresses connected to issuance records. As an organization that values privacy, removing this requirement is important to us.
  • Providing expiration notifications costs Let’s Encrypt tens of thousands of dollars per year, money that we believe can be better spent on other aspects of our infrastructure.
  • Providing expiration notifications adds complexity to our infrastructure, which takes time and attention to manage and increases the likelihood of mistakes being made. Over the long term, particularly as we add support for new service components, we need to manage overall complexity by phasing out system components that can no longer be justified.
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 hours ago

It's more than needing a reminder: Let's Encrypt Certs are valid for a maximum of 90 days before they need to be reissued. Doing this 4 times (or more) a year, for years on end will be tedious and error prone.

Most tools that request and install Let's Encrypt Certs automatically do this without the need for human interaction (30 days prior to the expiration) . Actually, they work so well you don't notice the "behind the scenes work" that's happening.

The problem is when this renewal process "stop working". I'd been using Let's Encrypt for years w/o problems, but eventually the client I was using wasn't updating and it was using a deprecated Let's Encrypt API. Ultimately, the cert stopped updating, but I got the email reminder from Let's Encrypt and I was able to fix it w/o a disruption.

Now, this was just a server for personal use. So if the SSL cert expired, it would not be the end of the world. Plus, I would have gotten a bunch of SSL errors the next time my client was trying to sync data, and I probably would have dropped everything to fix it. But the email reminder was a convenient feature, which allowed me to fix it whenever I had time.

That said, if Let's Encrypt wants to save some money for their free service, I'm certainly not going to complain (although I will miss it).