What happens when an SSL certificate expires

What visitors see

Browsers show a full-page warning such as “Your connection is not private” and make it difficult to continue to the site. Many visitors will leave, search engines may drop the site’s secure pages, and some services that connect to your site (payment and booking tools, for example) can start failing.

Why certificates expire

Certificates are issued for a limited time, and trusted ones are now valid for months rather than years. Free certificates such as Let’s Encrypt last 90 days and rely on automatic renewal.

Why renewals fail

• Automatic renewal was never switched on, or was switched off during a hosting change.
• DNS records changed so the renewal can no longer prove you control the domain.
• A firewall, redirect or maintenance page blocks the renewal check.
• A paid certificate was not renewed or its payment failed.
• The new certificate was issued but the web server was not restarted or still serves the old one.

How to fix it

1. Find out who issued the certificate and where it is managed (your host, a control panel or a certificate provider).
2. Renew or reissue it, or trigger the automatic renewal from your hosting control panel.
3. Check the new certificate is actually being served and that the whole certificate chain is installed.
4. Test the site in a fresh browser window.

How to avoid it

Confirm auto-renewal is on, and get warned in good time. Pingee checks your certificate daily and emails you at 30, 14 and 7 days before it expires and on the day it does. See SSL monitoring. A valid certificate only shows the connection is encrypted; it does not mean a site is secure overall.

Written by the Pingee team. Last reviewed 12 October 2026.