Lets Encrypt SSL Certificates for Azure Web Apps

28/02/2016

I have before blogged about my work on a plugin for letsencrypt-win-simple, that eased the installation of Lets Encrypt Certificates on Azure Web Apps.

That project was mostly a trial run to see if it was possible to get it to work, and it is now abandoned. But fear not, I have created a much better solution, an Azure Web App Site Extension that can be used to request and install Lets Encrypt certificates on Azure Web Apps.

I’m not going to go into a lot of details in this blog post on how to use it. I just want to high-light the general process.

To get a SSL certificate for you Azure Web App, for you own custom domain, you need to do three things.

  1. Install the site extension
  2. Create a Azure AD service principal and assign it permission to the resource group that you site belongs to
  3. Request the certificate through a 3 step wizard in the site extension

That all there is to it. When this process have been completed you will be able to use HTTPS on your own domains for free. The certificates will automatically be renewed once they expire (every three months).

You can see a site where I used it here: https://schdo.com/.

This is a great step towards getting HTTPS on more sites, no longer is money the excuse. And it is not too complicated either.

If you are interested in getting started please check my how to install on github.