SSL provides encryption between your website and its visitors. It ensures privacy for any data submitted over the internet and gives your website visitors peace of mind when they browse your website or online store.
All of our cPanel based plans include a free SSL Certificate. To be able to issue a certificate to your hosting plan a number of requirements need to be met.
If your SSL is not being installed on your plan, work through this checklist to diagnose the problem:
Where does your domain resolve to?
SSL Certificates are issues by a Certificate Authority (CA). The CA will need to confirm that the SSL for your website is actually for you and not for a fake account.
They do this by looking up your website and checking where it is hosted. If your website is not live on the internet from the server that requested the SSL, it will be denied.
You can check your domain is pointing to the right IP address by using a tool like DNS Checker
Type in your domain name, click Search and wait for the servers to report back the IP address:
Now log in to your cPanel and ensure it matches the IP address shown:
(your IP address will be different than the one show in the example images)
If the numbers don't match, your domain is not pointing to your hosting.
The quickest way to fix this is to ensure you have updated the nameservers to the following:
- ns1.uptimewebhosting.com.au
- ns2.uptimewebhosting.com.au
If your domain is registered with UpTime you can follow the steps in this article:
Reset or Edit my Nameservers
If your domain is registered elsewhere, you will need to contact your registrar on how to update the nameservers.
Important Notes
- If you are using a CDN like CloudFlare, you cannot use the SSL included in your hosting. This is because the CDN will not pick up the required information from the hosting server and pass it through to the CA. Your CDN usually will provide an SSL for free so contact them directly for support.
- If you are not able to edit the nameservers due to your preference to use a third-party DNS, you can update the A record on your current DNS to point to your hosting. You can retrieve your IP address from the main cPanel screen when you first login.
Domain Nameservers are correct but still no SSL
Once you have confirmed your IP address matches the one displayed in cPanel you may need to request the SSL again.
Log in to your cPanel account and scroll down the Security section and click on SSL/TLS Status:
If you see red warnings, this means the SSL Certificate failed. To retry, click on the Run AutoSSL button.
It can take a few minutes for the SSL to be requested and issued.
Once complete, if you still don't see all green padlocks, check the Certificate Status. Some common issues:
Self-signed
Expires on February 21, 2025. The certificate will renew via AutoSSL
This means the CA has not been able to issue the SSL yet. Use the Run AutoSSL button to try again
An error occurred the last time AutoSSL ran
DNS DCV: No local authority:
The domain “uptimewebhosting.com.au” resolved to an IP address “149.28.181.29” that does not exist on this server.
This means your domain does not resolve to the cPanel account.
An error occurred the last time AutoSSL ran
DNS DCV: No local authority: “subdomain.uptimewebhosting.com.au”; HTTP DCV: “subdomain.uptimewebhosting.com.au” does not resolve to any IP addresses on the internet.
This means you have a domain that does not have an A record in your DNS. Check your DNS settings.
