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Let's Encrypt VS Application Load Balance

Compare Let's Encrypt VS Application Load Balance and see what are their differences

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Let's Encrypt logo Let's Encrypt

Letโ€™sย Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority brought to you by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG).

Application Load Balance logo Application Load Balance

Automatically distribute incoming traffic across multiple targets using an Application Load Balancer.
  • Let's Encrypt Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-12
  • Application Load Balance Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-05

Let's Encrypt features and specs

  • Free of Charge
    Let's Encrypt provides SSL/TLS certificates at no cost, making it an economical choice for individuals and businesses.
  • Automated Certificate Issuance and Renewal
    The process of obtaining and renewing certificates can be automated using the ACME protocol, reducing manual intervention and administrative overhead.
  • Ease of Use
    Let's Encrypt simplifies the process of enabling HTTPS for websites, even for users with limited technical expertise.
  • Security
    Let's Encrypt certificates provide strong encryption, improving the security of data transmitted between clients and servers.
  • Widely Recognized
    Certificates issued by Let's Encrypt are trusted by all major web browsers and operating systems.
  • Promotes Secure Web Practices
    By making SSL/TLS certificates freely available, Let's Encrypt encourages more websites to adopt HTTPS, contributing to a more secure internet.

Possible disadvantages of Let's Encrypt

  • Short Duration of Certificates
    Let's Encrypt certificates are valid for only 90 days, requiring more frequent renewals compared to traditional certificate authorities.
  • Limited Support Options
    Let's Encrypt relies on community support and documentation, and does not offer dedicated customer support for troubleshooting and assistance.
  • No Extended Validation (EV) Certificates
    Let's Encrypt does not issue Extended Validation (EV) certificates, which provide additional verification and a higher level of trust for business websites.
  • Potential for Misuse
    Since certificates are issued for free and with minimal validation, there is a risk that cybercriminals might use them for phishing or other malicious activities.
  • No Wildcard Certificates for Multi-Level Subdomains
    While Let's Encrypt supports wildcard certificates for single-level subdomains, it doesn't support them for nested subdomains (e.g., *.sub.example.com).
  • Reliance on Third-Party Tools for Automation
    Users may need to rely on third-party tools or scripts for automation, which could introduce additional complexity or security risks.

Application Load Balance features and specs

  • Layer 7 Processing
    Application Load Balancer operates at the application layer (Layer 7), allowing it to make routing decisions based on advanced content-based rules, such as the HTTP headers, request URL, and query string.
  • Advanced Routing
    ALB supports dynamic host-based and path-based routing, enabling requests to be dispatched to different backend services based on the URL pattern or the host domain, which is particularly useful for microservices architectures.
  • WebSocket and HTTP/2 Support
    Supports sticky sessions and WebSocket, allowing for long-lived sessions and bidirectional communication between clients and servers. It also supports HTTP/2, providing improved performance over HTTP/1.1.
  • Integrated Security Features
    ALB integrates with AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) to secure applications and protect against common web exploits. It also supports TLS offloading, simplifying encryption management.
  • Monitoring and Logging
    Offers detailed CloudWatch metrics and logs to monitor traffic patterns, latency, and other critical operational details. This helps in proactively troubleshooting and optimizing performance.

Possible disadvantages of Application Load Balance

  • Complex Configuration
    Setting up and configuring ALB might be more complex compared to Network Load Balancers or Classic Load Balancers, especially with intricate routing and security rules.
  • Higher Costs
    Application Load Balancers can be more expensive due to advanced features and capabilities, particularly when handling high traffic levels, compared to simpler load balancing solutions.
  • Limited Protocol Support
    ALB is primarily designed for HTTP/HTTPS traffic and may not be suitable if your application needs to handle TCP/UDP-based protocols directly.
  • Performance Overhead
    Operating at Layer 7 can introduce slight latency due to the additional processing required for content-based routing and SSL termination.

Analysis of Let's Encrypt

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Let's Encrypt is a good choice for many website owners looking to implement HTTPS. It is trusted by major web browsers and has gained a strong reputation for reliability and ease of use.

Why this product is good

  • Let's Encrypt is widely considered a good option for SSL/TLS certificates because it provides free, automated, and open certificate issuance, which makes it accessible and convenient for website owners to secure their domains. It's designed to eliminate the complexity and costs typically associated with obtaining and renewing SSL certificates. Its easy integration with various web server software and support for automated renewals via the Certbot tool further enhances its appeal.

Recommended for

    Let's Encrypt is recommended for small to medium-sized websites, blogs, personal projects, non-commercial sites, and anyone looking to quickly and easily obtain SSL/TLS certificates without incurring costs. Larger enterprises or businesses with specific security and compliance requirements might need additional features provided by commercial certificate authorities.

Let's Encrypt videos

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Application Load Balance videos

AWS ALB | AWS Application Load Balancer | What is Application Load Balancer AWS | Intellipaat

More videos:

  • Review - Step by Step Instructions to setup Application Load Balancer | what is AWS Application Load Balancer

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Let's Encrypt and Application Load Balance)
Identity And Access Management
Cloud Computing
0 0%
100% 100
Security & Privacy
100 100%
0% 0
Cloud Hosting
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Let's Encrypt seems to be a lot more popular than Application Load Balance. While we know about 344 links to Let's Encrypt, we've tracked only 23 mentions of Application Load Balance. 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.

Let's Encrypt mentions (344)

  • Mastering VPS For Frontend Engineer - Part 2
    So, here we are this is by far one of the most amazing steps, in this step your step you officially marked as a secure site (HTTPS) and google will rank it better (SEO rank HTTPS over HTTP), and all this comes from Let's Encrypt organization and its all free, we can simply by simple commands enable it and make an auto renew when expired, sometime companies or providers will sell these if you're using shared hosting. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • How to Configure SSL Certificates in Nginx for Secure HTTPS Connections
    ๐Ÿ’ก Pro Tip: Get free certificates from Let's Encrypt or purchase from trusted CAs like DigiCert/Sectigo. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Locking Down Your Docker Containers: A Developerโ€™s Guide to Encryption
    For production, use a proper certificate authority (e.g., Letโ€™s Encrypt) instead of self-signed certs. Check out Letโ€™s Encrypt for free certificates. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Don't Get Rate-Limited: Use Let's Encrypt Staging
    Autocert is a Pomerium feature that automatically provisions and renews TLS certificates for your routes using Letโ€™s Encrypt. No manual cert management, no copying files around โ€” just tell Pomerium to handle it and it will issue valid certificates on the fly. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • EU OS for the Public Sector
    > speaking about it in webinars and various conferences That's unfortunately the feeling I got from the landing page, lots of talking, bureaucracy and buzzword bingo and not much "doing". I might be wrong. For comparison https://letsencrypt.org, not a single mention of "webinars" or "stakeholders". - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
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Application Load Balance mentions (23)

  • Authenticating users in the load balancer with Cognito
    Say that we have an application running behind a public-facing Application Load Balancer (ALB). The load balancer's target can be any supported target, including ECS containers, EC2 instances or even Lambda functions. Because the application is only available to authenticated users, we want to find a solution to identify them. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • A Practical Guide To Deploying A Complex, Production Level, Three-tier Architecture On AWS
    The Load balancer is the entry point to the application. The Application Load Balancer, residing in the presentation layer, will route traffic through the AutoScaling Group to logic-tier instances residing in the logic layer. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • The RoboNet Artificial Media Protocol - How a new internet protocol can make AI regulation more human
    Eg. AWS can have their Load Balancer tuned for OSI layer 7 rules for ramp content, exactly what everyone would need to redirect RAMP headers/signatures/etc straight into its proper routes/servers. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Creating Application Load Balancer rules for fast feature stack deployments
    The service in question uses ECS Fargate behind a private Application Load Balancer (ALB). The engineering team placed an HTTP API Gateway before the ALB that performs the authentication. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Introduction to Cloud Load-Balancers
    What is an Application Load Balancer? Https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/application/introduction.html. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Let's Encrypt and Application Load Balance, you can also consider the following products

OpenSSL - OpenSSL is a free and open source software cryptography library that implements both the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols, which are primarily used to provide secure communications between web browsers and โ€ฆ

Amazon API Gateway - Create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale

Ensighten - Ensighten provides enterprise tag management solutions that enable businesses manage their websites more effectively.

AWS Lambda - Automatic, event-driven compute service

AWS Certificate Manager - AWS Certificate Manager from Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon Route 53 - Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable DNS web service.