Getting started

Renew Radar watches your certificates so an expired one never takes you by surprise. This page covers connecting your first domain, how automatic checks ("sweeps") work, and what each status means.

1. Create an account

Sign up with your email — no credit card required. Once you're in, you'll land on your dashboard, which is empty until you add a certificate to watch.

2. Add a certificate

From the Certificates page, click Add domain. You can track a certificate two ways:

• Live domain — enter a hostname like shop.acme.com and Renew Radar fetches the certificate currently being served over HTTPS, including the chain as served by the host (leaf and intermediates).
• Offline certificate — for internal services, client certificates, or anything not reachable over the network, paste a PEM-encoded certificate (or a full-chain bundle) directly instead of a domain.

Free accounts can track up to 20 certificates.

3. How sweeps work

Every certificate is automatically re-checked once an hour. During a sweep, Renew Radar:

• Re-fetches the live certificate for the domain (or re-parses the stored PEM for offline certificates).
• Updates the issuer, key algorithm, serial number, fingerprint, and validity window.
• Recalculates the certificate's status and triggers any alerts that status change crosses.

You don't need to do anything for sweeps to run — but if you want to see a change reflected immediately, click the rescan button (the circular arrow) on an individual certificate, or Scan now from the Certificates page to check everything right away.

4. Certificate statuses