Why isn’t the Let’s Encrypt wildcard automatically renewing? GoDaddy $%&@

I’ve been pretty busy with real life as I’m sure everyone is these days… over the summer you likely didn’t notice that the SSL certificate expired on this website. I eventually got around to manually renewing the Let’s Encrypt wildcard SSL certificate because I didn’t have time right then to dig into why my monthly cronjob wasn’t working properly. I realize I’m about 5 – 6 months late on this story but hey it’s my story for today.

It’s Friday and some much needed personal time off and since it’s raining outside I’m left to deal with anything that needs attention inside the house… having emptied all the mouse traps in the garage (that time of year here in Pennsylvania) and having already made my trip to the bank and to the DMV I’m left with digital maintenance – did I mention I built a new PC – no I didn’t did I, I really need to catch up on this blog.

Anyway, back to Let’s Encrypt and GoDaddy… upon digging into the code I find that the API call to GoDaddy is failing with the following message:

{"code":"ACCESS_DENIED","message":"Authenticated user is not allowed access"}

Interesting, let me see if GoDaddy expires the API key or secret like LinkedIn likes to-do, perhaps I’ll just regenerate them regardless. After a new API key and secret still no luck, even calling the API via cURL returns the same error message. A quick search of Google quickly reveals a few stories that cause some concern…

• GoDaddy ACCESS DENIED via API-Call
• GoDaddy no longer allows API access to clients (e.g. for DNS-based cert renewal) if you have less than 50 domains

It would seem that GoDaddy removed access via their API for smaller customers? They probably notified me and I just missed the email message, after all I’m pretty busy. Hmm… nope they didn’t notify me, seven years of email archives and nothing from GoDaddy about them restricting access to their API. I do have a message from them in March of 2022 asking if it was me setting up the original API key and secret. Disappointing but that seems to be the trend for 2024, vendor after vendor and don’t get me started on the Private Equity mess. For the record I have 7 domains with GoDaddy and have been using them since 2007.

I think it’s time to let my money do the talking, even if it requires more of my personal time than I have to offer – it’s really the only voice any of us have.

What do you think?

Cheers!