free: "Let's Encrypt" + Azure Web Apps

HTTPS is enabled by default on Azure Web Apps when running on default shared "azurewebsites.net" domain, but with custom domain one needs to add a custom SSL certificate to enable HTTPS. That feature is available to purchase for $70/year from Azure portal,
or one can use a free certificate instead. The configuration is not trivial, but it is possible
as described in the article below.

"Let's Encrypt" Azure Web Apps the Free and Easy Way | GoorooThink Tech News | Articles | Skills Analytics | Gooroo

letsencrypt.org is a new certificate authority backed by some of the internet's biggest players, including: the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mozilla, Google Chrome and many others. Let's Encrypt eliminates the complex process of manual certificate creation, validation, signing, installation and even renewal by instead leveraging an automated DevOps style approach with open source command line tooling built upon an open standard called ACME (Automated Certificate Management Environment).

"Add support for free SSL certs like those from Let's Encrypt" is one of the highest rated suggestions of all time on the Azure Web Apps Feedback Forum. You see, as nice as the community built Let's Encrypt clients mentioned above are, we've still had no way to run them on Azure's PaaS offerings.

That was true until about a week ago, when Simon ingeniously packaged up ACMESharp in an Azure Site Extension called _Azure Let's Encrypt_, and published it to the Azure Site Extension gallery."