How to Check If Your SSL Certificate Is Expiring

Your SSL certificate has an expiry date — and when it expires, your website shows a "Your connection is not private" warning that drives visitors away instantly. Checking it regularly is one of the simplest ways to protect your business.

Here are four ways to do it.

1. Check in Your Browser (30 seconds)

The fastest way to check any website's SSL certificate:

1. Visit your website in Chrome or Firefox
2. Click the padlock or site info icon in the address bar (🔒 in Firefox; Chrome 117+ replaced the padlock with a tune icon)
3. Click "Connection is secure" → "Certificate is valid"
4. Look at the "Valid until" date

If that date is within 30 days, it's time to renew.

Limitation: You have to remember to check manually. Easy to forget.

2. Use an Online SSL Checker

Several free tools check SSL certificates from outside your network:

• SSL Labs (ssllabs.com/ssltest) — detailed grade report, shows chain issues
• CertGuard's free checker — instant results with expiry date and issuer info
• DigiCert SSL Tools — simple expiry check

Just enter your domain and the tool connects to your server and reads the certificate details.

Limitation: Still manual — you have to remember to check.

3. Check via Command Line (Developers)

If you have terminal access, OpenSSL is the most reliable method:

echo | openssl s_client -connect yourdomain.com:443 -servername yourdomain.com 2>/dev/null \
  | openssl x509 -noout -dates

This outputs:

notBefore=Jan 15 00:00:00 2025 GMT
notAfter=Jan 15 23:59:59 2026 GMT

The notAfter date is your expiry. You can also add this to a cron job and email yourself when it's within 30 days.

Limitation: Requires technical knowledge and server access.

4. Use Automated Monitoring (Recommended)

The only method that eliminates the risk of forgetting is automated monitoring. A monitoring tool checks your certificate every few hours and sends you an alert before it expires.

CertGuard checks your SSL certificate automatically and sends email alerts at 30, 14, 7, and 1 day before expiry — so you always have time to renew before anything breaks.

Setup takes under 2 minutes:

1. Sign up for a free account
2. Add your domain
3. Get alerts automatically

How Early Should You Renew?

Most certificate authorities recommend renewing 30 days before expiry. Some reasons:

• DNS propagation can take 24–48 hours
• Validation processes (especially EV certificates) can take days
• Your hosting provider may need time to deploy the new certificate
• You want a buffer in case something goes wrong during renewal

Don't wait until the last week. Renewing 30 days early costs nothing and eliminates stress.

What Happens If You Miss the Expiry Date?

The moment your certificate expires:

• Browsers show a full-page "Your connection is not private" warning
• Visitors can't proceed without manually bypassing the warning (most won't)
• Google Chrome flags your site as dangerous
• Search engines can't crawl your site while it's showing a security error, which affects your rankings over time
• E-commerce transactions stop — customers won't enter payment details on an "unsafe" site

The good news: renewing an expired certificate is usually fast — minutes to hours for DV certificates (such as Let's Encrypt); OV and EV certificates may take longer due to identity validation requirements. Either way, the downtime during that period is lost revenue and damaged trust.

Summary

The browser and online checker methods are useful for a one-off check. For ongoing protection, automated monitoring is the only approach that guarantees you'll never be caught off guard.

Start monitoring your SSL certificate for free — CertGuard checks every 6 hours and alerts you before anything expires.