Introduction to Amazon ACM

AWS Certification Manager (ACM) is a service that allows you to easily issue, manage, and deploy public and private SSL certificates for use with AWS services and internally connected resources.

Services in AWS that include ACM integration:

The public SSL certificate provided by ACM is free, intended to secure public websites created by the AWS ecosystem. The main attractions of public ACM certification are speed and convenience. Although these certificates only have a validity period of 3 months, users do not have to deal with creating, installing, and renewing certificates because the manager does it all for you.

However, there are some limitations when it comes to ACM certification. They cannot be used for email encryption, and high assurance certificates like organization and extended validation level certificates are not available, only domain validation. If you’re hosting your site on AWS, these may be factors to take into consideration before choosing your SSL provider.

If you do not want to use the free certificates provided by ACM, you can purchase a certificate from an SSL certificate provider, and use ACM to install it. This certificate is called a "Certificate Authority" or "CA".

By using CA SSL you have the option to get certificates that validate your business or organization, providing a higher level of trust to your users. This is especially beneficial for e-commerce stores or websites that request personal information from users.

In short, whether you choose a free SSL certificate from ACM or CA will largely depend on your specific needs. For news websites or Blogs, ACM certifications are suitable.

The private SSL certificate provided on ACM is not free, and you have to pay a monthly fee to use it. This certification is suitable for securing an internal network that uses AWS services and internally connected resources.