# Source: src/lib/business/blog-articles.tsx → articles[monitoring-ssl-certificate-expiry-small-business]. Keep in sync.

# Monitoring SSL certificate expiry for small business, dated and exact.

> What a 90/30/7/1-day expiry alert cadence actually buys you, what each CA charges for a re-issue, and the habits a small shop can run to never see the browser warning page.

URL: /blog/monitoring-ssl-certificate-expiry-small-business
Canonical page: /blog/monitoring-ssl-certificate-expiry-small-business
Site index: /llms.txt
Blog index: /blog
Author: SiteGuardian founder
Published: 2026-07-07
Updated: 2026-07-10
Keyword: monitoring SSL certificate expiry for small business
Tags: monitoring SSL certificate expiry for small business

## TL;DR
- What a 90/30/7/1-day expiry alert cadence actually buys you, what each CA charges for a re-issue, and the habits a small shop can run to never see the browser warning page.

## Key takeaways
- Q: What does a 90 / 30 / 7 / 1-day expiry alert cadence buy you?
  A: Four chances to learn the renewal path has broken before a visitor sees the browser warning. 90 days out is the first chance to learn the renewal failed. 30 days is the deadline. 7 days is the last warning before some platforms refuse to renew at all. 1 day is the “migrate before the browser warning page renders” email.
- Q: What does each certificate authority charge for a re-issue?
  A: Let’s Encrypt is the only CA that issues domain-validated certs for free, and its auto-renew story on a managed host is the most reliable in the category. DigiCert, Sectigo, and ZeroSSL charge per-certificate on paid tiers; the surprise is the wildcard premium and the re-issue fee when a re-issue is needed before expiry.
- Q: What three habits prevent a cert from getting old?
  A: First, a 90-day-out renewal calendar reminder. Second, a monthly hostname audit that reads the SAN list and prunes hostnames you no longer serve. Third, a daily probe that emails you at 90 / 30 / 7 / 1 days out on every plan. The probe catches the silent failure the host logs do not surface.
- Q: What do the habits not cover?
  A: Mixed-content crawling. Domain expiration. CAA record mismatches. SHA-1 deprecation warnings. SiteGuardian probes the cert path and not the pages themselves; for mixed-content audits, you want a different tool — or the free URL audit on demand, which reads the redirect chain plus the cert chain.
- Q: What if I would rather skip the habits?
  A: The 90-day calendar reminder takes fifteen minutes to set up; the monthly hostname audit takes one browser tab; the daily probe takes one URL. If you would skip all three, the alternative is a browser-warning day that loses the trust you cannot invoice back. For the smallest paid path, see the SiteGuardian pricing page.

## What this article is
- The article opens by reframing "expired TLS" as a silent failure — the host logs say the renewal ran; the cert path says otherwise, and the browser warning page only renders after trust is already lost.
- It walks the 90/30/7/1-day alert cadence: 90 days is the first chance to learn the renewal path has broken, 30 days is the deadline, 7 days is the last-warning-before-platform-refusal, 1 day is the "migrate before the warning page renders" email.
- It lays out the three habits (90-day-out calendar reminder, monthly hostname audit reading the SAN list, daily probe) and is honest that mixed-content, domain expiry, and CAA records belong to a different tool.

## Take action
- See what your cert chain actually says today.: Run the free audit → /audit.
- See plans & pricing → /pricing.
- Compare with Oh Dear → /vs/oh-dear.

## Related reading
- How to keep your small business website up → /blog/how-to-keep-your-small-business-website-up.
- Is my site down right now → /blog/is-my-website-down-right-now.
- Website monitoring for small businesses → /blog/website-monitoring-for-small-businesses.
- An automated maintenance tool worth buying → /blog/automated-website-maintenance-tool.
- /blog
- /llms.txt

## Site context
- SiteGuardian is one paid product: a $299 Lifetime deal, plus Starter $19/mo and Pro $39/mo. The full inventory is at /llms.txt.