TLS certificate lifespans are shrinking fast. The CA/Browser Forum passed Ballot SC-081v3 unanimously in April 2025, setting a phased reduction: 200 days by March 2026, 100 days by March 2027, and 47 days by March 2029. Organizations managing dozens or hundreds of certificates can no longer rely on spreadsheets, calendar reminders, or manual renewal workflows. The math doesn't work — at 47-day lifespans, a team managing 100 certificates is processing 7+ renewals per week, every week, forever.

certctl is a self-hosted platform that automates the entire certificate lifecycle — from issuance through renewal to deployment — with zero human intervention. It works with any certificate authority, deploys to any server, and keeps private keys on your infrastructure where they belong. It's free, self-hosted, and covers the same lifecycle that enterprise platforms charge $100K+/year for.

gantt
    title TLS Certificate Maximum Lifespan — CA/Browser Forum Ballot SC-081v3
    dateFormat YYYY-MM-DD
    axisFormat
    todayMarker off
    section 2015
        5 years (1825 days)    :done, 2020-01-01, 1825d
    section 2018
        825 days               :done, 2020-01-01, 825d
    section 2020
        398 days               :active, 2020-01-01, 398d
    section 2026
        200 days               :crit, 2020-01-01, 200d
    section 2027
        100 days               :crit, 2020-01-01, 100d
    section 2029
        47 days                :crit, 2020-01-01, 47d

Actively maintained — shipping weekly. Found something? Open a GitHub issue — issues get triaged same-day. CI runs the full test suite with race detection, static analysis, and vulnerability scanning on every commit.

Ready to try it? Jump to the Quick Start — you'll have a running dashboard in under 5 minutes.

Note: ADCS integration is handled via the Local CA's sub-CA mode — certctl operates as a subordinate CA with its signing certificate issued by ADCS. Any CA with a shell-accessible signing interface can be integrated via the OpenSSL/Custom CA connector.

All connectors are pluggable — build your own by implementing the connector interface.

Dashboard Stats, expiration heatmap, renewal trends, issuance rate	Certificates Inventory with bulk ops, status filters, owner/team columns
Issuers Catalog with 10 CA types, GUI config, test connection	Jobs Issuance, renewal, deployment queue with approval workflow

See all screenshots →

Certificate lifecycle tooling falls into two camps: enterprise platforms (Venafi, Keyfactor) that cost six figures and take months to deploy, or single-purpose tools (certbot, cert-manager) that handle one slice of the problem. certctl fills the gap — full lifecycle automation, self-hosted, free, CA-agnostic, and target-agnostic. If you're running certbot cron jobs, manually renewing certs, or stitching together scripts across mixed infrastructure, certctl replaces all of that.

Built for platform engineering and DevOps teams managing 10–500+ certificates, security and compliance teams who need audit trails and policy enforcement for SOC 2, PCI-DSS 4.0, or NIST SP 800-57 (compliance mapping included), and small teams without enterprise budgets who need Venafi-grade automation for a 50-server environment. For a detailed comparison, see Why certctl?

Architecture. Go 1.25 control plane with handler→service→repository layering, PostgreSQL 16 backend (21 tables), and a pull-only deployment model — the server never initiates outbound connections. Agents poll for work. For network appliances and agentless servers, a proxy agent in the same network zone handles deployment via the target's API (WinRM, iControl REST, SSH/SFTP). Background scheduler runs 7 loops: renewal with ARI integration (1h), job processing (30s), agent health (2m), notifications (1m), short-lived cert expiry (30s), network scanning (6h), certificate digest (24h). See Architecture Guide for full system diagrams.

Security-first. Agents generate ECDSA P-256 keys locally — private keys never touch the control plane. API key auth enforced by default with SHA-256 hashing and constant-time comparison. CORS deny-by-default. Shell injection prevention on all connector scripts. SSRF protection (reserved IP filtering) on the network scanner. Atomic idempotency guards on scheduler loops. Issuer and target credentials encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM. Every API call recorded to an immutable audit trail with actor attribution, body hash, and latency tracking. CI runs race detection, 11 linters, and vulnerability scanning on every commit.

Key design decisions. TEXT primary keys — human-readable prefixed IDs (mc-api-prod, t-platform, o-alice) so you can identify resources at a glance in logs and queries. Idempotent migrations (IF NOT EXISTS, ON CONFLICT DO NOTHING) safe for repeated execution. Dynamic configuration via GUI with AES-256-GCM encrypted credential storage and env var backward compatibility. Handlers define their own service interfaces for clean dependency inversion.

Automated lifecycle. Certificates renew and deploy themselves. The scheduler monitors expiration, issues through your CA, and deploys to targets — zero human intervention. ACME ARI (RFC 9773) lets the CA direct renewal timing. Ready for 47-day (SC-081v3) and 6-day (Let's Encrypt shortlived) certificate lifetimes.

Operational dashboard. 26-page GUI covers the entire lifecycle: certificate inventory with bulk ops, deployment timeline with rollback, discovery triage, network scan management, agent fleet health, short-lived credential countdown, approval workflows, and observability metrics. Configure issuers and targets from the dashboard — no env var editing, no server restarts.

Private keys stay on your servers. Agents generate ECDSA P-256 keys locally, submit only the CSR. The control plane never touches private keys. After deployment, agents probe the live TLS endpoint and compare SHA-256 fingerprints to confirm the right certificate is actually being served.

Discovery. Agents scan filesystems for existing PEM/DER certificates. The network scanner probes TLS endpoints across CIDR ranges without agents. Cloud discovery finds certificates in AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, and GCP Secret Manager. Continuous TLS health monitoring tracks endpoint status (healthy/degraded/down/cert_mismatch) with configurable thresholds and historical probe data. All discovery modes feed into a unified triage workflow — claim, dismiss, or import what you find.

Policy engine. Certificate profiles constrain key types, max TTL, and EKUs — with crypto policy enforcement that validates every CSR against profile rules before it reaches the issuer. MaxTTL caps are enforced per issuer connector. Approval workflows pause jobs for human review. Ownership tracking routes notifications to the right team. Agent groups match devices by OS, architecture, IP CIDR, and version.

Enrollment protocols. EST server (RFC 7030) for device and WiFi enrollment. SCEP server (RFC 8894) for MDM platforms and network devices. S/MIME issuance with email protection EKU.

Revocation. Single and bulk revocation (by profile, owner, agent, or issuer). DER-encoded X.509 CRL per issuer, signed by the issuing CA. Embedded OCSP responder. RFC 5280 reason codes. Short-lived certs (TTL < 1 hour) are exempt — expiry is sufficient revocation.

Audit and observability. Immutable append-only audit trail records every lifecycle action, every API call, and every approval decision. Prometheus metrics endpoint. Scheduled certificate digest emails. Continuous endpoint health monitoring with state machine transitions and real-time alerts.

Notifications. Slack, Teams, PagerDuty, OpsGenie, SMTP, webhooks. Routed by certificate owner. Daily digest emails with stats and expiring certs.

Multiple interfaces. REST API (111 routes), CLI (12 commands), MCP server (80 tools for Claude, Cursor, Windsurf), Helm chart, web dashboard. Certificate export in PEM and PKCS#12.

First-run onboarding. Wizard guides you through connecting a CA, deploying an agent, and issuing your first certificate. Or start with the pre-populated demo — 32 certificates, 10 issuers, 180 days of history.

For the complete capability breakdown, see the Feature Inventory.

git clone https://github.com/shankar0123/certctl.git
cd certctl
docker compose -f deploy/docker-compose.yml up -d --build

Wait ~30 seconds, then open https://localhost:8443 in your browser. (The shipped docker-compose.yml self-signs a cert via the certctl-tls-init init container on first boot — accept the browser warning for the demo, or feed the generated ca.crt to your client.) The onboarding wizard walks you through connecting a CA, deploying an agent, and issuing your first certificate.

Want a pre-populated demo instead? Add the demo override to see 32 certificates across 10 issuers, 8 agents, and 180 days of realistic history:

docker compose -f deploy/docker-compose.yml -f deploy/docker-compose.demo.yml up -d --build

The deploy/ directory has four compose files: docker-compose.yml (base platform), docker-compose.demo.yml (demo data overlay), docker-compose.dev.yml (PgAdmin + debug logging), and docker-compose.test.yml (standalone integration tests with real CA backends). See the Docker Compose Environments Guide for a service-by-service walkthrough, or the Quick Start for a summary.

curl --cacert $(docker compose -f deploy/docker-compose.yml exec -T certctl-server cat /etc/certctl/tls/ca.crt) https://localhost:8443/health
# {"status":"healthy"}

The control plane is HTTPS-only (TLS 1.3, no plaintext listener). See docs/tls.md for cert provisioning patterns and docs/upgrade-to-tls.md if you're upgrading from a pre-v2.2 release.

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/shankar0123/certctl/master/install-agent.sh | bash

Detects your OS and architecture, downloads the binary, configures systemd (Linux) or launchd (macOS), and starts the agent. See install-agent.sh for details.

helm install certctl deploy/helm/certctl/ \
  --set server.apiKey=your-api-key \
  --set postgres.password=your-db-password

Production-ready chart with Server Deployment, PostgreSQL StatefulSet, Agent DaemonSet, health probes, security contexts (non-root, read-only rootfs), and optional Ingress. See values.yaml for all configuration options.

docker pull shankar0123.docker.scarf.sh/certctl-server
docker pull shankar0123.docker.scarf.sh/certctl-agent

Every v* tag publishes signed, attested release artefacts. Binaries (certctl-agent, certctl-server, certctl-cli, certctl-mcp-server for linux|darwin × amd64|arm64) ship alongside a checksums.txt, per-binary SPDX-JSON SBOMs, Cosign signatures, and SLSA Level 3 provenance. Container images on ghcr.io/shankar0123/certctl-{server,agent} are built with docker/build-push-action provenance: mode=max + sbom: true and are additionally signed with Cosign at the image digest.

All signatures use Cosign keyless OIDC; the signing identity is the release workflow running on a signed tag.

1. Verify SHA-256 checksums:

sha256sum -c checksums.txt

2. Verify the Cosign signature on checksums.txt:

cosign verify-blob \
  --bundle checksums.txt.sigstore.json \
  --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github\.com/shankar0123/certctl/\.github/workflows/release\.yml@refs/tags/' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer 'https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com' \
  checksums.txt

Every individual binary ships with its own .sigstore.json bundle (unified Sigstore bundle containing signature, certificate chain, and Rekor inclusion proof). Swap checksums.txt for any binary name and point --bundle at the matching <binary>.sigstore.json to verify it directly.

3. Verify SLSA Level 3 provenance on a binary:

slsa-verifier verify-artifact \
  --provenance-path multiple.intoto.jsonl \
  --source-uri github.com/shankar0123/certctl \
  --source-tag v2.1.0 \
  certctl-agent-linux-amd64

4. Verify a container image signature and its SBOM / provenance attestations:

IMAGE=ghcr.io/shankar0123/certctl-server:v2.1.0

cosign verify \
  --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github\.com/shankar0123/certctl/\.github/workflows/release\.yml@refs/tags/' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer 'https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com' \
  "$IMAGE"

# SBOM attestation (SPDX-JSON, emitted by docker/build-push-action)
cosign verify-attestation --type spdxjson \
  --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github\.com/shankar0123/certctl/' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer 'https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com' \
  "$IMAGE"

# SLSA provenance attestation (docker/build-push-action `provenance: mode=max`)
cosign verify-attestation --type slsaprovenance \
  --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github\.com/shankar0123/certctl/' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer 'https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com' \
  "$IMAGE"

Pick the scenario closest to your setup and have it running in 2 minutes.

Each directory contains a docker-compose.yml and a README.md explaining the scenario, prerequisites, and customization.

# Install
go install github.com/shankar0123/certctl/cmd/cli@latest

# Configure
export CERTCTL_SERVER_URL=https://localhost:8443
export CERTCTL_API_KEY=your-api-key
export CERTCTL_SERVER_CA_BUNDLE_PATH=/path/to/ca.crt   # or --ca-bundle on the CLI; --insecure for dev self-signed

# Usage
certctl-cli certs list                    # List all certificates
certctl-cli certs renew mc-api-prod       # Trigger renewal
certctl-cli certs revoke mc-api-prod --reason keyCompromise
certctl-cli agents list                   # List registered agents
certctl-cli jobs list                     # List jobs
certctl-cli status                        # Server health + summary stats
certctl-cli import certs.pem              # Bulk import from PEM file
certctl-cli certs list --format json      # JSON output (default: table)

certctl ships a standalone MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that exposes all 80 API endpoints as tools for AI assistants — Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, OpenClaw, VS Code Copilot, and any MCP-compatible client.

# Install and run
go install github.com/shankar0123/certctl/cmd/mcp-server@latest
export CERTCTL_SERVER_URL=https://localhost:8443
export CERTCTL_API_KEY=your-api-key
export CERTCTL_SERVER_CA_BUNDLE_PATH=/path/to/ca.crt   # required for self-signed bootstrap
mcp-server

The MCP server is env-vars-only — there are no CLI flags for TLS. If you must bypass verification for local development against a self-signed cert, set CERTCTL_SERVER_TLS_INSECURE_SKIP_VERIFY=true. Never set that in production.

Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "certctl": {
      "command": "mcp-server",
      "env": {
        "CERTCTL_SERVER_URL": "https://localhost:8443",
        "CERTCTL_API_KEY": "your-api-key",
        "CERTCTL_SERVER_CA_BUNDLE_PATH": "/path/to/ca.crt"
      }
    }
  }
}

make build              # Build server + agent binaries
make test               # Run tests
make lint               # golangci-lint (11 linters)
govulncheck ./...       # Vulnerability scan
make docker-up          # Start Docker Compose stack

CI runs on every push: go vet, go test -race, golangci-lint, govulncheck, and per-layer coverage thresholds (service 55%, handler 60%, domain 40%, middleware 30%). Frontend CI runs TypeScript type checking, Vitest tests, and Vite production build. 1,668 Go test functions with 625+ subtests, plus frontend test suite.

Core lifecycle management — Local CA + ACME v2 issuers, NGINX target connector, agent-side key generation, API auth + rate limiting, React dashboard, CI pipeline with coverage gates, Docker images on GHCR.

30+ milestones shipping enterprise-grade features for free. Sub-CA mode, ACME DNS-01/DNS-PERSIST-01/EAB/ARI (RFC 9773)/profile selection, step-ca, Vault PKI, DigiCert CertCentral, Sectigo SCM, Google CAS, AWS ACM PCA, Entrust, GlobalSign, EJBCA, OpenSSL/Custom CA issuers. NGINX, Apache, HAProxy, Traefik, Caddy, Envoy, Postfix, Dovecot, IIS (WinRM), F5 BIG-IP, SSH, Windows Certificate Store, Java Keystore, Kubernetes Secrets targets. EST server (RFC 7030) and SCEP server (RFC 8894) enrollment protocols. RFC 5280 revocation with DER CRL + embedded OCSP responder. Certificate profiles, ownership tracking, team assignment, agent groups, interactive approval workflows. Filesystem, network, and cloud secret manager (AWS SM, Azure KV, GCP SM) certificate discovery with triage GUI. Dynamic issuer/target configuration via GUI with AES-256-GCM encrypted storage. First-run onboarding wizard. Post-deployment TLS verification. Certificate export (PEM/PKCS#12). S/MIME support. Prometheus metrics. Scheduled certificate digest emails. Slack, Teams, PagerDuty, OpsGenie, SMTP notifications. MCP server (80 tools), CLI (12 commands), Helm chart. Compliance mapping (SOC 2, PCI-DSS 4.0, NIST SP 800-57). 5 turnkey deployment examples. Agent install script. Migration guides from certbot, acme.sh, and cert-manager. See the Feature Inventory for details.

Enterprise capabilities for larger deployments are available in the commercial tier.

Kubernetes cert-manager external issuer, cloud infrastructure targets, extended CA support, and platform-scale features.

Certctl is licensed under the Business Source License 1.1. The source code is publicly available and free to use, modify, and self-host. The one restriction: you may not use certctl's certificate management functionality as part of a commercial offering to third parties, whether hosted, managed, embedded, bundled, or integrated. The BSL 1.1 license converts automatically to Apache 2.0 on March 14, 2033.

For licensing inquiries: [email protected]

If certctl solves a problem you have, star the repo to help others find it. Questions, bugs, or feature requests — open an issue.