How to monitor your Let’s Encrypt certificates

What is going on?

Let's Encrypt has announced that it will discontinue its expiration notification email service on June 4, 2025. This change is significant for users who have relied on these notifications to manage their SSL certificates.

Why will Let’s Encrypt stop sending expiration emails?

According to Let’s Encrypt, retaining millions of email addresses to provide this email service no longer aligns with their privacy values. A second argument is that users who automate their certificate renewal don’t need reminders. And the third — and probably most significant—reason is that the company can save money and reduce infrastructure complexity by no longer sending out these emails.

For some people, this is good news

Some people, like hosting providers, manage multiple certificates. Some of them did not enjoy the endless stream of notifications. That number of alerts will likely only increase in the future with the introduction of certificates with an even shorter lifespan.

For others, this is a problem

But what if you depend on notification emails to manage your certificate? How will you remember to renew it in time? If you use Let’s Encrypt, we recommend setting up automatic renewal. But even then, a renewal can fail, and you want to know when that happens.

What are your options?

Option 1: fix it yourself

If you are tech-savvy, you can create an automated script that queries the expiry date of all your domains, returning the ones that expire soon. You can also run a daily script that informs you every time a certificate renewal fails. But you need time to set this up, test it, and ensure it returns the correct data. Here you have the same problem as with a certificate, how will you know if your script stops working?

Option 2: set up third-party monitoring

That’s why Let’s Encrypt advises users to set up proper third-party monitoring of their certificates. If you set up automated alerts, you will know when a certificate is about to expire or if it has already expired. But that begs the question: which tool can you trust?

Monitoring your certificate with Semonto

Third-party monitoring like Semonto can even be better than the current emails you get from Let’s Encrypt because you are entirely in charge. You can decide what you want to get notified of: when a certificate is about to expire or only when the expiration has already happened. You can also pick the channel. Maybe email is not the way you want to get notified. In Semonto, you can send the notifications to a dedicated Slack or Teams channel or receive a push notification on your phone. You can also choose how long in advance you want to be notified and who should get the notifications.

Let’s Encrypt won’t tell you. We will.

In Semonto, you can monitor more than just your SLL certificate expiration dates. You also stay on top of your uptime, cron jobs, server health, and more. On top of that, you can also scan your websites for broken links. In other words, Semonto is the go-to dashboard for anyone who takes a website's or server's technical health seriously. Create a free trial here.