Request a public certificate in AWS Certificate Manager

The following sections discuss how to use the ACM console or AWS CLI to request a public ACM certificate.

Request a public certificate using the console

To request an ACM public certificate (console)

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the ACM console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/acm/home.

   Choose Request a certificate.

2. In the Domain names section, type your domain name.

   You can use a fully qualified domain name (FQDN), such as www.example.com, or a bare or apex domain name such as example.com. You can also use an asterisk (*) as a wild card in the leftmost position to protect several site names in the same domain. For example, *.example.com protects corp.example.com, and images.example.com. The wild-card name will appear in the Subject field and in the Subject Alternative Name extension of the ACM certificate.

   When you request a wild-card certificate, the asterisk (*) must be in the leftmost position of the domain name and can protect only one subdomain level. For example, *.example.com can protect login.example.com, and test.example.com, but it cannot protect test.login.example.com. Also note that *.example.com protects only the subdomains of example.com, it does not protect the bare or apex domain (example.com). To protect both, see the next step.

   Note

   In compliance with RFC 5280, the length of the domain name (technically, the Common Name) that you enter in this step cannot exceed 64 octets (characters), including periods. Each subsequent Subject Alternative Name (SAN) that you provide, as in the next step, can be up to 253 octets in length.

   To add another name, choose Add another name to this certificate and type the name in the text box. This is useful for protecting both a bare or apex domain (such as example.com) and its subdomains such as *.example.com).

3. In the Validation method section, choose either DNS validation – recommended or Email validation, depending on your needs.

   Note

   If you are able to edit your DNS configuration, we recommend that you use DNS domain validation rather than email validation. DNS validation has multiple benefits over email validation. See AWS Certificate Manager DNS validation.

   Before ACM issues a certificate, it validates that you own or control the domain names in your certificate request. You can use either email validation or DNS validation.

   If you choose email validation, ACM sends validation email to the domain that you specify in the domain name field. If you specify a validation domain, ACM sends the email to that validation domain instead. For more information about email validation, see AWS Certificate Manager email validation.

   If you use DNS validation, you simply add a CNAME record provided by ACM to your DNS configuration. For more information about DNS validation, see AWS Certificate Manager DNS validation.

4. In the Key algorithm section, chose an algorithm.

5. In the Tags page, you can optionally tag your certificate. Tags are key-value pairs that serve as metadata for identifying and organizing AWS resources. For a list of ACM tag parameters and for instructions on how to add tags to certificates after creation, see Tag AWS Certificate Manager resources.

   When you finish adding tags, choose Request.

6. After the request is processed, the console returns you to your certificate list, where information about the new certificate is displayed.

   A certificate enters status Pending validation upon being requested, unless it fails for any of the reasons given in the troubleshooting topic Certificate request fails. ACM makes repeated attempts to validate a certificate for 72 hours and then times out. If a certificate shows status Failed or Validation timed out, delete the request, correct the issue with DNS validation or Email validation, and try again. If validation succeeds, the certificate enters status Issued.

   Note

   Depending on how you have ordered the list, a certificate you are looking for might not be immediately visible. You can click the black triangle at right to change the ordering. You can also navigate through multiple pages of certificates using the page numbers at upper-right.

Request a public certificate using the CLI

Use the request-certificate command to request a new public ACM certificate on the command line. Optional values for the validation method are DNS and EMAIL. Optional values for the key algorithm are RSA_2048 (the default if the parameter is not explicitly provided), EC_prime256v1, and EC_secp384r1.

aws acm request-certificate \
--domain-name www.example.com \
--key-algorithm EC_Prime256v1 \
--validation-method DNS \
--idempotency-token 1234 \
--options CertificateTransparencyLoggingPreference=DISABLED

This command outputs the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of your new public certificate.

{
    "CertificateArn": "arn:aws:acm:Region:444455556666:certificate/certificate_ID"
}