# acme.sh

13 Hacker News commenters recommended acme.sh and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended as an easy, rock-solid ACME client for TLS certificates that needs little attention once set up. Critics note a binary release triggered ClamAV.

## Why people recommend it

- Easy one-time setup needing little upkeep (2 comments): "Again one-time setup, easy, did it once literally almost a decade ago and haven't had to think about it since." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46134806)) "let acme handle everything on its own, as intended" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48861621))
- Rock-solid and well regarded (3 comments): "Thank you Let's Encrypt, together with the acme.sh, caddy and the whole ecosystem for TLS." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46213851)) "acme.sh and simple-acme do and both are absolutely rock solid." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47472797)) "Everything it does wrong, acme.sh does right." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47475657))
- Handles multiple CAs and wildcards (2 comments): "using acme.sh i generate a wildcard and then internally my servers can pull the wildcard" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46302897)) "acme.sh supports multiple CAs there is even a RFC for CAs that describe the api." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48034071))
- Runs on Linux, BASH and Windows (3 comments): "acme.sh is my recommendation for Linux and anything else that runs a BASH or similar" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47550715)) "packages like acme.sh are damn close to universal" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46129169)) "acme.sh is superb for !Windows." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47069134))

## What people warn about

- Binary release flagged by ClamAV (1 comments): "CAUTION, though, the last time I downloaded a binary release, ClamAV triggered on it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48850881))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Certbot](https://hackerapproved.com/p/certbot.md): 24 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "acme.sh", https://hackerapproved.com/p/acme-sh/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).