SSL/TLS Certificate - InCommon Certificate Service Vendor Transition (Sectigo → CertiNext)

The move from Sectigo to CertiNext is expected to reduce certificate lifetimes to 90 days. While pricing and core services remain stable, teams using manual processes should plan for increased operational effort and consider automation.

Transition completion date: July 17, 2026

Additional information is available from InCommon:

This service issued approximately 2,000 server certificates last year via https://servercertificates.wisc.edu with InCommon's, vendor Sectigo and now CertiNext. 

Here is a highlight of what will remain the same, what is changing, and steps going forward:

Expected to Remain the Same:

Pricing

Continued service and support to the UW-Community at no charge.

Manual certificate issuance

Continued support via https://servercertificates.wisc.edu that will require moderate development work from our team to integrate with CertiNext’s new API

ACME-issued certificates

Continued support for automated ACME issuance but requires minimal changes for existing customers (updating a single URL and credentials)

IGTF certificates

Continued support for academic grid computing

New Constraints and Areas of Concern

Certificate Lifetime Reduction

  • Due to a newly created InCommon intermediate CA certificate, the maximum certificate lifespan is expected to be reduced to 90 days once the transition to CertiNext is complete.
  • This is a change from the previously communicated certificate lifetime schedule that extended through 2029.

Impact on Manual Certificate Users

  • Teams relying on manual certificate installation will see an increase in operational effort.
  • We encourage you to automate, that said not all applications or vendors support native certificate automation and as a result, some teams may experience increased administrative burden.

Feature Availability

  • CertiNext is expected to offer more features than the current service.
  • Some features may be offered as à la carte add-ons.
  • At this time we do not have a a complete list of features or options available.

Next Steps

Contract Review: DoIT Purchasing currently has the new agreement. They are reviewing it and comparing it to our previous agreement. We expect the agreement to be virtually identical, but we are prepared to negotiate terms if necessary.

User Communication: Our team has assembled a contact list of email addresses that have received certificates over the past year.  We will communicate important transition information to the list.

Questions? servercertificates@doit.wisc.edu 


Keywords:
service migration sectigo certinext 
Doc ID:
160749
Owned by:
PHILIP J. in SSL Server Certificates
Created:
2026-04-16
Updated:
2026-04-17
Sites:
SSL Server Certificates