First let's identify what parts of the world are free-er than the US (for a certificate).
this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2026
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is it possible to get the eff to move elsewhere?
And give up the best weather and access to 5 star restaurants in the world? Surely you jest!
There are some commercial Certificate Authorities that offer free certificates. But in contrast Let's Encrypt is a non-profit.
- ZeroSSL (Austria)
- Actalis (Italy)
@Sibbo I do not see any problem with Letsencrypt. Any CA which is widely trusted has to follow the same rules. This rules are set up by the CA Browser Forum. Which metadata does LE collect? My server's IP address, domain and subdomain, mail address. These are logged in the CT logs. Every CA has to log all certificates in a public CT log. Regardless which CA I choose, these data are public. There are not any critical data or metadata that LE can collect.
Letsencrypt can be directly forced to revoke certificates by the US. Organisations outside of the US are less vulnerable against that.
And ICAAN can hand your domain over to US law enforcement regardless of the TLD and your register.
Is that also part of your decision tree?
Maybe it should be! We need non-fascis-adjacent DNS roots.
ICANN can (theoretically) not force anyone to deregister your domain. If your stack is all outside the US, and everyone collectively decided to disobey the US, the Internet's decentralization would be true.
The hard part about building a decentralized network is finding out where to hide the centralization.
For the Internet, the centralization is hidden in the IP block and DNS Zone delegation. After this is done, that region is decentralized. A/I's problem was that the registry for .org is a subsidiary of IANA. With EU servers, EU DNS and a EU domain, EU clients cannot be prevented from connecting solely from the outside. The US would need a collaborator.
That is all well and good, but we have many instances of domains being pulled from people because of court ruling and your register is not going to defy a court ruling for your €17/year domain.
I don't think anyone is gonna solve that problem until it's actually a problem.
It is a problem, and there are solutions.
This is why I never even started using Letsencrypt; looking at the fine print, you actually enter into some kind of contract with some US entity, which I don't want even if it's the coolest of all FOSS foundations.
Here's a site that has some info:
https://www.eurotoolkit.eu/categories/certificate-authority-ca
I have used certum.pl for years and it looks like I might go back to them soon because my VPS provider doesn't offer bundled certs anymore.
I used to pay €40/year iirc.
I suspect it's gotten more expensive though.
edit:
oh looks like ZeroSSL are doing it letsencrypt-style with Acme protocol for €0.
edit2:
No, not more expensive. Some of the providers in the above link are labyrinthine and I couldn't even find a Pricing section - usually a sign that it's too expensive at least for a normal consumer - but others offer yearly certs for as little as €30 (taxes not included).
edit3:
Yeah some people are going to have a hard time accepting that a contract with a for-profit company under EU jurisdiction might be preferable to a contract with a non-profit under US jurisdiction.
ZeroSSL costs 180 per year for unlimited 90 day certs. I get the independence from US-based services, but I don't want to drop that kind of money on my toy domains.
I've been using ZeroSSL for over 5 years and can attest that they are friendly in that I have literally never seen or heard from them.
I've set up and cancelled multiple domains in this time, and have had one domain running for the entirety of my time with ZeroSSL.
I don't think you (OP) are gonna find much better than a for-profit business with a good track record if you're unwilling to use Letsencrypt.
They do sound good, but it's worth pointing out that for a LE equivalent, unlimited 90 day certs, ZeroSSL would cost 180 Euro per year, that's 15 per month. I couldn't find another registry with a comparable offer. They always follow the ancient model of paying for every cert or getting a wildcard cert you have to manually install everywhere. To me, that model is dead. Automatic provisioning and renewal of certs is a must.
What? I'm not paying a dime and I'm not manually inserting certificates.
This is good to know.