Overview

Sectigo is listed as the certificate authority on any Comodo certificate issued after January 2019, while Comodo is listed on any certificate issued before that date. Both names are used to refer to the same business.

The steps to renewing professionally-signed SSL certificates obtained from Sectigo are outlined below.

When should I renew my certificate?

For further details, see the Sectigo auto-renew section below.

Make sure you renew your certificate before it expires. You will not lose any protection as a result of this.

Please keep in mind that if you renew your certificate before it expires, you will not lose any time on your current certificate that you have already paid for.

How to renew a certificate in the panel

Typically, certificate authorities send expiration/renewal reminders to the admin address 30 to 90 days before the certificate expires. GreggHost provides SSL certificate renewal reminders to the account’s primary contact address 35 days before the certificate expires.

The following sections detail the various alternatives for renewing your Sectigo signed SSL certificate.

Option 1 — Purchasing a renewal

In your panel, renewing your certificate is essentially the same as getting a new professionally-signed SSL certificate.

How can I get an SSL certificate that is signed by a professional?
Renewing the certificate before it expires does not extend the period remaining on your present certificate, which you have already paid for. When the current certificate expires, the new one will take its place.

Option 2 — Renewing your certificate in the panel (before it’s expired)

Click the Renew Certificate Now button in the panel to renew a Sectigo certificate before it expires.

This only appears within one month of the expiration date.

Go to the Secure Certificates section of the website.
Button for SSL Configuration
To the right of your domain, click the Settings button.
Soon to expire
To renew a certificate, click the Renew Certificate Now option.
Information on SSL certificates
Fill in your contact and website information.
In order to progress to the next phase, you must fill in ALL of the fields (including the ‘Organization name’). Enter your first and last name if you don’t have an organization name. If your address does not include any of these information (such as an apt. #), you can leave ‘Street 2’ and ‘Street 3’ blank.
This information is used to create the Certificate Signing Request (CSR), which is used to create your new SSL certificate that has been professionally signed.
Click When you’re finished, move on to the next step.
Email address for SSL certificate
Choose one of your domain’s emails from the dropdown list on the next page.
Address for confirmation

This must be a domain-based email address. Ascertain that one of the emails provided in that dropdown has been setup on your domain and is capable of receiving mail. If it does not already exist, create it before proceeding.

Please keep in mind that utilizing email to validate your domain is a last resort. This means you might never get a confirmation email, but the SSL will still work. However, if the other DCV procedures fail to verify, you may receive an email. As a result, configuring this email address is still necessary. For more information, see the following article:

What exactly is the DCV procedure?
Choose your payment method on the last page. You have the choice of paying with a credit card or an electronic check.
Review of SSL payments
Even though you are currently renewing the current certificate, the panel will say ADD NEW CERTIFICATE.

When you’re finished, click the Next Step button.
Button for placing an order
After you’ve done filling out the form, click the Place Certificate Order option.

Option 3 — Renewing your certificate in the panel (after it’s expired)

Go to the Secure Certificates section of the website.
Button for SSL Configuration
To the right of your domain, click the Settings button.
SSL is no longer valid.
Under your expired domain, click the Renew Certificate Now button.
After that, follow the procedures in Option 2 to enter your personal and credit card information and place a new order.

Using the auto-renewal feature

GreggHost renews your Sectigo certificate using the auto-renewal feature as long as the following criteria are met:

You’ve turned on AutoPay.
GreggHost is your domain’s host (i.e., the domain is listed in the panel and has its DNS pointed to GreggHost).
Navigate to the Secure Certificates page and select the Settings icon to the right of your domain to see if it’s set up for auto-renewal:

SSL renewal on autopilot
By default, Auto Renewal is turned on. Click the Turn Off Auto Renewal button to turn off Auto Renewal.

You can renew your certificate in the panel if it’s less than a week before it expires, even if it’s configured to auto-renew. Because auto-pay is enabled, it will not request you for billing information. In the case that it fails the DNS validity check, this gives you with more time to manually validate the certificate.

If you need to make changes to a certificate that’s set to auto-renew

If you need to modify a certificate (for example, contact information, email address, or billing information), go to the Secure Certificates page and select the Settings icon to the right of your domain:

Button to add new certificate
When you click the Add New Certificate button, you’ll be taken to the Sectigo certificate signup page, where you can purchase a new certificate with your revised information.

What if my Sectigo SSL certificate does not complete the renewal process?

Even if you renewed your Sectigo certificate on the panel, there may be times when your renewal does not complete. Typically this shows as ‘Unknown’ for the Expires value, which is usually due to a failure to respond to the request email sent to the Domain Control Validation (DCV) address you selected for this purchase.

To successfully complete the certificate renewal, you must respond to the email that is sent.

If you did not receive the DCV email confirming your SSL certificate order, you can renew a new email request by following these steps:

Go to the Secure Certificates section of the website.
To the right of the domain, click the Settings option.
Click the Resend DCV button when the Settings page appears.
Make sure to send the order confirmation to a valid email address.
The DCV email is delivered to the address you provided. After then, check your email and answer to the request. It can take up to an hour for the SSL certificate to become active after the DCV email has been confirmed.
Renewing your certificate with another Certificate Authority
If you want to renew the certificate with a different Certificate Authority (CA), simply copy the current Certificate Signing Request (CSR) from your panel and use it to start the renewal procedure with them. You can get a hold of your CSR by following the steps outlined in the following article:

Before I buy a third-party SSL certificate, what do I need from GreggHost?
If you can’t locate an accessible Certificate Signing Request for the domain/subdomain in the panel, use the methods in the Generating or Regenerating a CSR article to replace it.