Let’s Encrypt Wildcard
Updated on Aug 7, 2023
A wildcard certificate is an SSL certificate valid for all of a domain’s subdomains. It eliminates the necessity to install an SSL certificate on each subdomain individually. It can be identified by an asterisk in front of the domain it was issued on. For example, *.domain.com.
The majority of users do not need a wildcard certificate. However, they can be useful in situations like these:
- You have a lot of subdomains;
- In a multi-site structure when you have to assign an SSL certificate to every subdomain;
- You create new subdomains often;
- You are using a wildcard DNS record and need to protect all possible domains using SSL.
Unless your requirements resemble one or more of those listed above, we recommend you stick to non-wildcard certificates. They are simpler, faster to issue, and safer to manage.
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Prerequisites
There are two criteria that must be met so the installation of the wildcard certificate will be successful.
- DNS Validation - The SSL validation method has to be DNS-01;
- DNS Configuration - The domain which will be receiving the wildcard certificate must point to the server issuing it via Nameservers. That is because the server must create a TXT record to demonstrate control of your domain.
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How to Issue a Wildcard Certificate
The steps for issuing a wildcard certificate are very similar to the steps for a normal certificate.
- Open the Lets Encrypt SSL interface in your cPanel account;
- In the Issue a new certificate section click +Issue next to your desired domain;
- Select which domains you would like wildcards for from the Include Wildcard*? column. Tick the domains you want to be included. Then select the DNS-01 validation method;
- Click Issue.
If you experience a failure, please double-check that your domain is using the Nameservers of the hosting service the issuing Let’s Encrypt is on, rather than being externally hosted (such as on Cloudflare).
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Sharing Wildcards Between Subdomains
Sometimes you will want to share a single wildcard certificate between many subdomains without having to re-issue the certificate to the main domain. This is handy if you already have a wildcard certificate issued, but you add a new subdomain and want to expand the wildcard certificate's coverage to it as well. You can do this the following way:
- Issue a wildcard certificate to your primary domain if it does not have one yet;
- For each subdomain that should use that certificate as well go to the interface for issuing a new certificate and find If you would instead like to re-use an existing certificate from another virtual host, click here at the bottom of the page;
- Click the link and on the next page you can select the certificate that was already installed on the main domain;
- Click Install.
Using this particular functionality of Let's Encrypt will save you a lot of time and effort. With this you can add subdomains to the wildcard SSL certificate without having to reissue it over and over.
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