Install sslmate with Homebrew, Nix

Project links

• Homepage
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• sslmate

Project history

The SSLMate 1 CLI reference describes sslmate as the command-line client for SSLMate, a service for purchasing and managing SSL certificates. The tool automates certificate busy work such as generating a private key, generating a CSR, building a certificate bundle, renewing certificates, and downloading renewed certificates from scripts or cron.

The current SSLMate help system presents the older Basic SSLMate service, the SSLMate command-line interface, APIv2, and newer SaaS-oriented surfaces such as sslmate-agent and APIv3. The changelog shows ongoing service evolution around certificate approval, API keys, DNS integrations, Cert Spotter, and Certificate Transparency search.

Adoption history

SSLMate's own homepage markets the service around automation and shows the terminal command sslmate buy www.example.com as a first-class product interaction. It also lists customer logos and testimonials, including users praising command-line certificate purchase.

The supplied package metadata shows Homebrew and Nix packaging. That limited but meaningful package footprint matches the tool's audience: administrators and developers who want certificate issuance and renewal to be scriptable from Unix-like systems.

How it is used

The CLI is organized into subcommands such as buy, renew, reissue, rekey, revoke, download, list, show, edit, test, mkconfig, retry-approval, and link. The link command writes API credentials to the personal SSLMate configuration file so later commands can run without prompting.

On startup the CLI reads /etc/sslmate.conf and ~/.sslmate when present, with the personal file overriding global options. The SSLMATE_CONFIG environment variable can point to a different personal configuration file, and profiles can produce alternate global configuration and certificate directories.

Why package nerds care

SSLMate matters to package nerds because it packages certificate issuance as an installable CLI, not just a web dashboard. That made it fit naturally into cron, configuration management, and server provisioning long before every certificate workflow was expected to be ACME-native.

It also shows why credential-file documentation matters in package databases: the same file can be both a user config and an API-key store, so package metadata should distinguish ordinary config from secret-bearing state.

Timeline

• 2014: SSLMate changelog feed identifies the service changelog namespace from 2014.
• 2021: SSLMate changelog records per-domain authorized CA configuration for Cert Spotter.
• 2022: SSLMate changelog records flexible API key permissions and prefixed API keys.
• 2023: SSLMate changelog records expanded Cert Spotter APIs, webhooks, DNS integrations, Slack notifications, and CT Search API improvements.
• 2024: SSLMate changelog records additional DNS integrations and changes driven by CA/Browser Forum certificate-approval policy.
• 2026: SSLMate changelog records simpler DNS approval record names.

Related projects

• Related SSLMate surfaces include Cert Spotter, the Certificate Transparency Search API, sslmate-agent, APIv2, APIv3, and DNS provider integrations.
• The tool lives in the same operational space as ACME clients and certificate deployment automation, but SSLMate's official documentation frames it as a managed certificate purchasing and monitoring service with a CLI.

Sources

• https://sslmate.com/
• https://sslmate.com/help
• https://sslmate.com/help/changelog
• https://sslmate.com/help/reference/cli1
• input source_facts.package-manager