Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
42droids | on: Let's Encrypt bans certificate usage in any US sanctioned territory [pdf]
Has anyone got any experience with Zero SSL? https://zerossl.com/ It seems like a good EU alternative.
47282847 | parent | next
EU? There’s almost zero information on the company, no privacy policy? The only place I found any mention is the footer, “HID Global Corporation, part of ASSA ABLOY”. Assa Abloy seems Swedish but HID Global is a US company as far as a quick search goes. But without a proper company info page and privacy policy I wouldn’t consider it anywhere near a “good alternative” regardless.
ZeroSSL | root | parent | next
Jumping in here since we’ve been seeing more mentions of ZeroSSL lately, likely related to the recent CA/B Forum discussions around 1‑year certificates and ACME automation.

- We’re based in Austria (ZeroSSL GmbH). The company was acquired by HID in 2024, which is part of Assa Abloy (Sweden).

- We’re not positioning ourselves as a purely EU-based CA substitute, and we generally don’t market it that way.

- For DV certs specifically, we act as a distributor. Under the hood these are Sectigo-issued certificates, similar to how other providers (for example Namecheap) operate.

Happy to clarify further if useful.

loading story #48463876
loading story #48465284
loading story #48464499
slau | root | parent | next
HID was originally American and Scottish, but became fully American in 1994.

HID was acquired by Assa Abloy in 2000. No idea whether that means we now consider it Swedish.

ZeroSSL used to be Austrian until their acquisition in 2024.

I used to work for a company that got acquired by HID. It looks like HID has retained their original offices in some form.

nomadwastaken | root | parent
The privacy policy is under legal in the footer, exactly where I'd expect it to be honest. It also gives the company registration: > 1.1. We, ZeroSSL GmbH, FN 443956b (the “Company“) and below that the company address (registered in Austria).

Don't get me wrong, I agree that there is some lack of "who actually runs/controls this", especially on the about page where I expect such things to be.

At the very least it's not as transparent as I'd wish from a CA. E.g their Certificate Agreement is from Sectigo, so are they involved? No mention anywhere else from what I can see.

loading story #48460369
matharmin | parent | next
I use them in some cases to avoid the rate limits on LetsEncrypt, and they have better support for some older platforms (like ancient Android versions), and I'm pretty happy so far. I have a paid account to support them, but it's not a requirement for ACME certs. It works without issue with Kubernetes Certbot, and seamless to switch between ZeroSSL and LetsEncrypt.

I can't comment on the EU part though - not that relevant in my case.

linsomniac | parent | next
There was some subtle issue with ZeroSSL's implementation of ACME that I ran into with, IIRC, lego and domain certs and there was a ~5 year old lego open issue about it. That was a couple years ago, might be fixed, but my understanding at the time was that it was an issue with Zero's ACME implementation, so there may be dragons.
slau | parent | next
3 90-day ACME certs for free. 180€/year for unlimited 90-day certs and 5 yearly ones.

That’s a pretty steep increase. I would almost be more interested in a monthly fee per cert.

nomadwastaken | root | parent
From their docs[0] this doesn't seem to apply if using ACME, but they don't exactly make that clear...

> By using ZeroSSL's ACME feature, you will be able to generate an unlimited amount of 90-day SSL certificates at no charge, also supporting multi-domain certificates and wildcards. Each certificate you create will be stored in your ZeroSSL account.

[0]: https://zerossl.com/documentation/acme/

matharmin | root | parent
Yeah, they don't make it that clear, but you get basically the same functionality as with LetsEncrypt for free, including wildcard certs. You basically only need to pay for manually issued certs, or some of their other additional features.
nickf | parent | next
ZeroSSL aren't an EU-based alternative, unfortunately.
patrakov | parent
It's Sectigo under the hood.