Set free SSL by using AWS ACM

Free SSL by AWS ACM

It takes many steps to set SSL to your website.

You need to purchase the SSL by the agent, and get the certificate and locate it to the server. Each steps are not difficult, but it bothers a lot.

From last year, it is possible to set SSL to your website by using AWS ACM.

  • Very easy
  • No need to update every year
  • You can set SSL to ELB (Elastic Load Balancer), but for EC2.

Create Certificate

Go to ACM page in your AWS console.

AWS ACM create new certificate

Input the domain that you want to set SSL to the domain name. Like the image above, you can set wild card like *.example.com.

Next, authenticate the Email. AWS will send the authentication Email to admin@example.com.

Setting to ELB (Elastic Load Balancer)

At last, we need to set to ELB.

Choose “Load Balancer” in EC2 console page. Select the ELB that you want to set the SSL, and open “Listeners” tab, go to “Add listener”.

Edit listener of AWS ELB

Add HTTPS and click “Change” at SSL certificate.

Choose SSL from AWS ACM

After you choose Choose an existing certificates from AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) for Certificate Type, you can find the SSL that you just made.

Done!

It’s that easy.

Multi-domain SSL

I just noticed that you can get SSL for sub-domains by create SSL with wild card like *.example.com except example.com.

If you want to set SSL to example.com (without sub-domain) too, click Add another name to this certificate and input example.com there. That’s it! (I didn’t notice this for a while)

Let’s encrypt!

There’s a lot of pros but cons. It is also recommended to use SSL from the view of SEO.

Please try this! :)

@takp