Let’s Encrypt Now Issues Certificates for Public IPs

As of July 2025, Let’s Encrypt now supports issuing SSL certificates for public IP addresses (both IPv4 and IPv6) — no longer limited to domain names (CNAMEs).

👉 This is a major change, especially useful for:

  • Self-hosted environments without DNS
  • Testing or staging clusters
  • Internal APIs or services running on direct IPs

✅ What This Changes

  • No need to configure a domain name or CNAME just to enable HTTPS.
  • Provisioning scripts and DevOps services can rely on encrypted public IPs.
  • Let’s Encrypt still uses the ACME protocol, now with a new ipIdentifier validation.

🔐 Requirements

  • The IP address must be public and directly reachable.
  • You must use ACME v2 with a compatible client like certbot, acme.sh, or lego.

This update makes it easier to secure ephemeral deployments, containers, and temporary VMs.
A very welcome improvement for the open-source and DevOps communities.

https://letsencrypt.org/2025/07/01/issuing-our-first-ip-address-certificate/

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