The cost of an SSL certificate depends on the certificate type, domain name type, brand, and service you select. Before purchasing a certificate, review its billing details. This topic describes the billing details for Certificate Management Service and how to manage expired SSL certificates.
Billing method
SSL certificates and related services use the subscription billing method.
Billable item details
The following table lists all billable services for SSL certificates. Select and purchase the services you need.
For specific pricing of different billable items, refer to the prices on the purchase page.
Service type | Billing description |
SSL Certificate Management Service | Select a service period of 1, 2, or 3 years. The price for a 1-year service period includes only the SSL certificate fee. The prices for 2-year and 3-year service periods include the fees for the SSL certificate and the certificate hosting service. For example:
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Certificate hosting service | Certificate hosting is a service that ensures automatic renewal of your SSL certificates. When a certificate is about to expire, the service helps you automatically apply for a new certificate to extend its validity. This prevents service disruptions that can occur if you forget to renew your certificate. Certificate hosting also provides an automatic deployment feature. If you enable automatic deployment, a new certificate is automatically deployed to the corresponding cloud products after it is issued. Important
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Cloud product deployment service | The cloud product deployment service fee is the cost to use the one-click feature to deploy an issued certificate to Alibaba Cloud products that require the certificate, such as Anti-DDoS Pro, WAF, and CDN.
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Elastic Compute Service deployment service | The Elastic Compute Service deployment service fee is the cost to use the one-click feature to deploy an issued certificate to Alibaba Cloud servers, such as Simple Application Server or Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances.
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SSL certificate validity period
A certificate’s validity period depends on factors such as its issuance date and brand. For more information, see Changes to validity periods. To minimize the impact of certificate expiration on your website, Alibaba Cloud sends renewal reminders and provides a certificate renewal service before your certificate expires.
Impact of an expired SSL certificate
An SSL certificate expires at the end of its validity period. An expired SSL certificate affects your website in the following ways:
The website becomes inaccessible.
Browsers display a security warning when users access the website.
Affects the website’s search ranking.
Communication between visitors and the website cannot be encrypted.
Handle an expiring certificate
To prevent business disruption, apply for and obtain a new certificate before the current one expires. After the new certificate is issued, install it on the Alibaba Cloud products and web servers where the old certificate is installed to replace the expiring certificate.
Certificate type | Action required before expiration |
Commercial certificate | When the certificate is about to expire (within 15 days of expiration), purchase a new certificate through the renewal entry, and then reapply for, issue, and install the new certificate.
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Third-party certificate | Before the certificate expires, go to the third-party platform to purchase a new certificate. Then, use the Upload Certificate feature of Certificate Management Service to upload and deploy it again. For more information about how to upload a certificate, see Upload, sync, and share SSL certificates. |
Data handling for expired SSL certificates
If an SSL certificate remains expired for more than one year, Alibaba Cloud automatically deletes it. The certificate cannot be restored.