Troubleshooting “Certificate Is Pending Validation” in AutoInstall SSL
If AutoInstall SSL shows your “Certificate Is Pending Validation”, that means that it’s currently waiting for the Certificate Authority to complete validation and issue your SSL certificate.
Orders are usually pending validation for about 1-10 minutes. If an order stays in the pending validation status for longer, this may indicate a problem. Here are some reasons this could happen.
If you’re using file validation (this is the method AutoInstall SSL uses by default):
- Are you able to open the file validation URL (it’s displayed during the installation process and looks something like this: http://yourdomain.com/.well-known/pki-validation/aesftclongrandomstringzxgfc.txt) in your browser? If you’re not able to view that text file:
- Check if your DNS records are pointing your domain to the correct IP address/server
- Check that the web server is correctly configured to route traffic for that domain, is listening on port 80 and 443, your firewall isn’t blocking port 80 or 443, etc.
- Double-check that AutoInstall SSL has placed the file in the correct folder.
- If you used the –includewww argument, check if you can access the file validation URL both with and without the www. If one of the URLs doesn’t load, check your DNS and web server configuration for both www.yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com.
- Check that the DNS records for your domain are pointing to the correct server and have had time to propagate. You can check DNS propagation for your domain at https://dnschecker.org/
If you’re using DNS validation:
- Check that the nameservers on your domain are pointing to the correct DNS provider and that your DNS records have propagated. If you just setup or changed the nameservers on your domain, it can take up to 24 hours for the changes to propagate across the internet. You can check DNS propagation for your domain at https://dnschecker.org/
If none of those solutions work:
- Sometimes the certificate authority may have a delay in validating and issuing certificates.
- We’re happy to help troubleshoot any delays or issues in getting your certificate issued, just contact our support team.