Nowadays, it is very essential to keep your website secure. One of the simplest yet overlooked ways to protect your website is by monitoring SSL certificate expiration. Many website owners do not realise how quickly an SSL certificate expired. This can be damaging for the website.
Imagine if you wake up in the morning and get to know that the red “Not SECURE” sign appears to the visitors. This is going to create a bad impression on the audience. This only happens because you are not regularly monitoring the SSL certificate of your website.
In this complete guide, we will explain what SSL certificates are, why they expire, how to monitor them automatically and the best way to keep them updated. Whether you are a beginner, or a small business owner; this guide will help you in every way.
What is an SSL Certificate and Why is it so Important?
What SSL does?
An SSL certificate encrypts the communication between your website and your visitors. This means any data like login details, credit card information, or form information, is safely transformed.
When your site uses SSL, your web address starts with HTTPS instead of HTTP. The HTTPs is very essential for the site as it indicates the security of the site. With SSL, your browser shows a padlock icon, which indicates that your site is secure.
Why It Really Matters
Trust and Credibility
Visitors when visiting the site, the first thing they look at is the site, is padlock. If the SSL certificate is expired then the browsers may make your site appear with a warning message.
SEO Benefits
The HTTPS of the site are the ranking factors of the site. If your site has the HTTPS then it will indicate your site as the secure one and the crawler will prioritise it over the non-secure site.
Data Protection
SSL ensures the protection of the important data. It ensures that your site and the visitors’ data is protected from the hackers.
Compliance
Many privacy laws and payment standards require SSL certificates. So this is necessary.
Why does the SSL Certificate Expire?
You must be thinking why the SSL certificate expires? Here are the some reasons why it does expire:
Security Practices
The main reason the SSL certificates have an expiration date is the security. As the new technology is evolved, new encryption methods are also discovered. That is why, for security reasons SSL certificates are necessary. If we do not keep it updated, it will expire keeping security practices in view.
Verification
Each time you renew an SSL, the issuing authority re-verify the ownership of your domain. This is one of the main steps in maintaining the system in the global SSL ecosystem.
What Happens When SSL Certificates Expire?
If you do not monitor your SSL certificate continuously, it will expire. Here is what happens if it get expired:
- Browser Warning Appears: Visitors may see “ Not secured” or “Certificate Expired” messages.
- Traffic Drop: Your website traffic may drop. This happens due to the security issues.
- Search Ranking Falls: The ranking of your site may drop if your site is non-https.
- Integration Breaks: All those APIs and services relying on HTTPS may fail.
- Reputation Damage: If you do not monitor your SSL certificate expirations, it will affect the credibility of your brand.
That is why SSL monitoring is very essential. The automated SSL tracking tools are important to prevent these issues.
How to Check The Expiry Date of Your SSL Certificate
There are several ways to check the SSL certificate expiration whether it is automatically or manually. These ways include:
1. Browser Method:
- Go to your website
- Click on the padlock icon
- View certificate
- Check the “valid till” date
This is the simplest way to keep on checking the expiry date of the SSL certificate of your site.
2. Command Like Method
For developers and IT managers:
echo | openssl s_client -servername yourdomain.com -connect yourdomain.com:443 2>/dev/null | openssl x509 -noout -dates
This code can help you moni tor the SSL expiration of your site: which will be perfect for scripting and automation.
3. Online SSL Certificate Tools
There are a lot of online tools available for SSL certificate monitoring. For such purposes our SSL certificate monitoring can be the best to help you monitor the expiration of your site. These tools show expiry date, issuer, and configuration details in seconds.
SSL Certificate Monitoring – What It Really Means
SSL certificate monitoring means automatically tracking the health and expiration dates of your SSL certificates.
Good SSL monitoring tools:
- Check SSL expiry daily or hourly
- Send SSL certificate expiration alerts via email, SMS, Slack, or Teams
- Detect SSL problems, misconfigurations, and insecure protocols
- Provide certificate management dashboards for multiple domains
Essentially, SSL monitoring acts as an early-warning system: ensuring you renew before downtime happens.
Why You Should Monitor SSL Certificate Expiration Automatically
Manually checking websites can be done easily for the one website. But if you are managing 10, 50, or 100 domains, it can become difficult for you.
That is where automated SSL tracking tools and automatic SSL certificate monitoring software are used.
Automatic SSL certificate expiration monitoring ensures:
- You get alerts before expiration (via email, Slack, Teams, or SMS)
- You never miss a renewal
- Certificates across cloud providers stay valid
- Compliance is maintained
This is especially important for IT teams, DevOps, and digital agencies managing multiple clients.
Final Thought – Never Miss SSL Certification Again
SSL certificates are easy to forget but it can become costly if you ignore it. One expired certificate can damage your site’s reputation, SEO, and customer trust. By using automated SSL tracking tools, SSL certificate monitoring software, or even free SSL expiry monitoring tools, you can protect your website from downtime and data loss.
Here’s your quick checklist:
- Use a free SSL certificate checker to verify expiry.
- Set up automated SSL expiry alerts.
- Integrate alerts with Slack or Teams.
- Review your SSLs monthly.
- Choose the right SSL certificate monitoring tool for your needs.
With the right monitoring setup, you’ll never have to worry about expired SSL certificates again, your website will stay secure, trusted, and search-optimized 24/7.