Making the web more secure with free SSL certificates, Let’s Encrypt is a great way to make your Ghost site run on HTTPS.

We strongly recommend that all sites use SSL, and plan to make it a mandatory configuration for Ghost in the near future.

## Ghost(Pro)

All **[Ghost(Pro)](/content/pricing/index.html)** sites come with automatic SSL enabled by default and require no setup of any kind, so if you use our hosted platform to run Ghost: Configure a custom domain for your sites and you’re all set!

## Self-Hosting

If you’re self-hosting, though, [Let’s Encrypt](https://letsencrypt.org/) is fully integrated into our comprehensive [Ghost-CLI](/content/api/ghost-cli/index.html) tool so that you can provision a new SSL certificate in a couple of steps by running:

```bash
ghost setup ssl
```

This will prompt you for a couple of details, including your email address - which is required for Let’s Encrypt notifications about renewing your certificate. Your email address is not shared or used for _any_ other purpose when entered here.

This is a normal part of the larger [ghost setup](/content/api/ghost-cli/setup/index.html) CLI command.

> **Note:** You can, of course, only setup SSL if you have a properly configured domain name. Let’s Encrypt will not be able to provision a certificate for any Ghost install which is running locally, or on an IP address.

For more detailed, full install and setup guides for Ghost, make sure you check out the [specific install documentation](/content/setup/index.html) for your platform of choice.

## Launch your big idea

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Today, it's your turn.

[Start publishing now →](https://account.ghost.org/signup/)
