Introduction
I first installed SSL certificates on my sites using Certbot version 1.31.0 which was released on October 4, 2022. In November 2023, the certifcating authority, Let's Encrypt, announced that Windows support for Certbot would no longer be available after February 2024. The last version of Certbot that worked on Windows was version 2.9.0 which was released on February 8, 2024.
This last version of Certbot for Windows renewed the certficates in December 2025, but in January 2026, it refused to run properly. This meant I had to look for a new ACME (Automatic Certificate Management Environment) client to get new certficates and then renew them. Looking through the list of ACME clients, I chose to look at simple-acme.
System Setup
My installation of Apache is slightly unusual as I use a version compiled for Windows from Apache Lounge that has the mod_ssl module already configured. I also run multiple virtual hosts on the server that all need certificates.
- I use Apache web server on Windows 11
- Apache uses the PEM (Privacy-Enhanced Mail) certificate format
- I use Let's Encrypt as the Certificate Authority
- I currently use ECC encryption for the public keys
- I have access to the Apache configuration files in case the location of the certificates needs changing
- I have access to the DNS configuration through DNSExit in case the authentication keys needs updating
- DNSExit provides an account API key so that I can use a DNS-01 challenge for the domains I have registered with them
simple-acme
simple-acme is a command line interface (CLI) program. It just needs downloading, unzipped and placed whereever on the system you want it.
It has a lot of documentation that should be read through. It has a lot command line options and various plugins are available inclusing one for DNSExit so the verifications records can be written.
Usage
Once inzipped, open a command prompt with administrator permissions. Change directory to where simple-acme was unzipped to and type wacs to start the program. Follow the on-screen prompts to get the certificates.
simple-acme cli
Change the location of the certificates in Apache's configuration files, in my case httpd-ssl.conf and httpd-vhosts.conf