Installation

There are five methods to obtain the program.

WinGet

There is an official WinGet package available.

• Run winget install simple-acme to install the latest version
• Run winget upgrade simple-acme to upgrade to the latest version
• Run winget show simple-acme --versions to list all available versions
• Run winget install simple-acme --version 2.3.5.2195 to install a specific version

Note that WinGet is only available on Windows 10 version 1809 and later or on Windows Server 2025 or later.

Manual

Manual downloads hosted at GitHub and linked on this website on the download page unpack the contents of the .zip archive to a folder, for example %programfiles%\simple-acme. The website lists SHA256 hashes for manual integrity validation. If you need an older release, go to the release page on GitHub and you’ll find it there.

To update from a previous version, simply unpack the contents of the archive to the same folder as the previous version, overwriting all files already there. Settings and renewals will be preserved!

Chocolatey

There is an official Chocolatey package available.

• Install Chocolatey
• Run choco install simple-acme to install the program
• Run choco upgrade simple-acme to upgrade to the latest version
• Run choco search --exact simple-acme --all to list available versions
• Run choco install simple-acme --version 2.3.5 to install a specific version

Note that due to the manual moderation process in use by the Chocolatey community, there may be couple of days delay.

dotnet tool

There is an official NuGet package available which can be used as a .NET tool.

• Install .NET 9.0 on the system.
• Run dotnet tool install simple-acme --global to install the program
• Run dotnet tool update simple-acme --global to upgrade to the latest version
• Run dotnet package search simple-acme --exact-match to list available versions
• Run dotnet tool install simple-acme --global --version 2.3.5.2195 to install a specific version

Build it yourself!

You can clone the repo using git clone https://github.com/simple-acme/simple-acme and create your own build using the script .\build\appveyor-local.ps1. This requires at least git and the .NET 9.0 SDK.

Starting

Run wacs.exe (or just wacs on Linux) as an administrator/superuser. While running under a privileged context is not required for all operations, it will be necessary to set up a scheduled task (or cronjob), manage IIS bindings and handle validation requests internally, i.e. the most common use cases.