How to renew when your order ends
With SSL, renewing means buying a new order. There is no button that extends the one you have: when your order reaches its end, you buy another, and that one issues its own certificate.
It sounds like a technicality, but it changes what you have to do. Plenty of people wait for an "auto-renewal" notice that is never coming.
Renewing is not reissuing
| Reissue | Renew | |
|---|---|---|
| When | The certificate expires, the order is still alive | The order reaches its end |
| Cost | Free, included | It is a purchase |
| Result | New certificate, same order | New order and new certificate |
If you are not sure which one you are in, look at the two dates on your order.
How to renew
- Buy the certificate in the store, the same as the first time. It can be the same product or a different one: renewal is a good moment to move to a wildcard or a multi-domain certificate if your site has grown.
- Generate a new CSR on your server. Yes, even though the domain is the same: every order issues against its own CSR.
- Enrol the new order by pasting that CSR.
- Validate the domain. With a new order, validation happens again, even if you validated recently for the previous one.
- Install the certificate when it arrives.
Do it before it expires, not after
The previous certificate keeps working until its own date. If you buy the new order a few weeks ahead, you can generate, validate and install without rushing, and the change is invisible to your visitors.
If you wait until it expires, your site shows security warnings while you work through it — and domain validation can take hours if you choose the DNS method.
We email you before your order ends, with enough time to do this unhurried.
One domain, several orders
It is normal to end up with several orders for the same domain over the years: one expired, one running, and sometimes one just bought. That is not a mistake or a double charge. The one that matters is whichever issued the certificate installed today.
If you get a renewal notice for a domain you have already renewed, tell us: it means something is linked up wrongly on our side and we will fix it.
