More than 150 million domains use Let’s Encrypt tls certificate

The number of website domains using a tls certificate from Let’s Encrypt has risen to 152 million. The organization behind Let’s Encrypt expects a further increase this year, to 215 million websites.

Nearly 88 million Let’s Encrypt TLS certificates are active for the 152 million sites, according to statistics from the Internet Security Research Group, or ISRG, the legal entity behind the Let’s Encrypt initiative. The organization expects that in 2019 the numbers will increase to 120 million active TLS certificates for 215 million websites.

The ISRG would also like to thank everyone involved in the development of the more than 85 software clients for Let’s Encrypt’s acme protocol. The organization also hopes that Nginx will get built-in acme support this year, as Apache already has. Acme allows users to obtain certificates for their sites.

The Let’s Encrypt initiative launched the first TLS certificate in 2015. The goal is to make every site accessible via https with free provision and easy implementation. Behind the initiative are the EFF, Mozilla, Cisco, Akamai, IdenTrust and researchers from the University of Michigan. ISRG points out that, according to Mozilla, 77 percent of page loads were now encrypted, an increase from 67 percent the year before.