Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

KeyStore Explorer VS Smallstep Certificates

Compare KeyStore Explorer VS Smallstep Certificates and see what are their differences

KeyStore Explorer logo KeyStore Explorer

KeyStore Explorer is an open source GUI replacement for the Java command-line utilities keytool and jarsigner. KeyStore Explorer presents their functionality, and more, via an intuitive graphical user interface.

Smallstep Certificates logo Smallstep Certificates

A private certificate authority (X.509 & SSH) & ACME server for secure automated certificate management, so you can use TLS everywhere & SSO for SSH.
  • KeyStore Explorer Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-03-20
  • Smallstep Certificates Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-22

KeyStore Explorer videos

Keystore Explorer Quick Overview

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How to Prepare Keystore Explorer in PaperCut

Smallstep Certificates videos

No Smallstep Certificates videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

+ Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to KeyStore Explorer and Smallstep Certificates)
Digital Signage
100 100%
0% 0
Web Development Tools
54 54%
46% 46
Password Management
63 63%
37% 37
Identity And Access Management

User comments

Share your experience with using KeyStore Explorer and Smallstep Certificates. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Social recommendations and mentions

KeyStore Explorer might be a bit more popular than Smallstep Certificates. We know about 12 links to it since March 2021 and only 10 links to Smallstep Certificates. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

KeyStore Explorer mentions (12)

  • Caddy 2.8
    > I still have nightmares about trying to set up SSL with nginx and my own self-managed certificates. For anyone who needs to run their own CA (which I'm now doing for my homelab), I've found that using GUI software like KeyStore explorer is a sufficiently easy and lazy way of doing that, which actually works well, both for securing regular sites, as well as doing mTLS: https://keystore-explorer.org/ > Shoutout to... - Source: Hacker News / 16 days ago
  • make csr file from cert.pem
    Yes, that's clear but you need the private key to create a CSR. I'm guessing since you are using a Java app you should either have a JKS (old fashioned) or a P12 (pkcs12) keystore, one of those should contain the private key, you can use keystore explorer to extract the data. Https://keystore-explorer.org/. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Mkcert: Simple zero-config tool to make locally trusted development certificates
    Personally, I've also had decent experiences with Keystore Explorer: https://keystore-explorer.org/ I actually wrote about using it on my blog, which has plenty of screenshots: https://blog.kronis.dev/tutorials/lets-run-our-own-ca. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Export root + intermediate + CA Certificate
    Then let me tell you about keystore explorer https://keystore-explorer.org/ which will make your life a lot easier (and less chance that there are more then 1 keys inside your keystore. Source: over 1 year ago
  • If OpenSSL Were a GUI
    I... Kind of like it? Not the fact that using such a GUI would be almost impossible, like the humorous example of an "engineer oriented UI" in the Silicon Valley series https://www.reddit.com/r/SiliconValleyHBO/comments/4nvvnl/pied_pipers_easytouse_tools/ which might be confusing for most people. But rather the fact that all of the complexity the software has is laid bare, so that nobody could mistakenly assume... - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
View more

Smallstep Certificates mentions (10)

  • A convert from Judaism to Catholicism goes to r/Catholicism to ask if it would be appropriate to pass down a century old Jewish prayer shawl to his son. Not everyone is welcoming.
    Just a little heads up https://smallstep.com/certificates/. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Looking for an open source certificate management solution.
    Step-ca: Not web based, but the CLI is pretty user friendly: https://smallstep.com/certificates/. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Using k8s-apiserver as AAA server for microservices?
    I was just looking at https://smallstep.com/certificates a few days ago. It looks like they have an operator that fits your description as well as example docs for setting up inter-microservice mtls. Source: over 1 year ago
  • What are SSH Certificate Authority solutions?
    In the quick search I learned about Ssh cert authority which looks very manual and also like a dead project Smallstep's step-ca who put together very nice article about how to begin certificate authority process Netflix' BLESS is AWS only Cashier which also looks quite ok. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Quickly prototyping and testing TLS services with valid certs
    If you want something a little fancier (I.e. Get automatic certs with all that ACME goodness) check out SmallStep. This is next on my list of homelab projects. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing KeyStore Explorer and Smallstep Certificates, you can also consider the following products

TinyCA - TinyCA is a simple graphical userinterface written in Perl/Gtk to manage a small CA (Certification...

Teleport Database Access - Instant, secure, & privileged access to Postgres and MySQL

OpenXPKI - OpenXPKI is a software stack that provides all necessary components to manage keys and certificates...

BastionXP - BastionXP Identity Based Infrastructure Access Platform is a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) / Certificate Authority (CA) that creates, signs and distributes SSH, SSL X.509 certificates to servers and users upon successful SSO login via OAuth or SAML

EJBCA - EJBCA® is a PKI Certificate Authority software, built using Java (JEE) technology.

PKI.js - PKIjs is a pure JavaScript library implementing the formats that are used in PKI applications (signing, encryption, certificate requests, OCSP and TSP requests/responses). It is built on WebCrypto (Web Cryptography API) and requires no plug-ins.