### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2026, 9:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/letsencrypt-account-email-no-longer-needed/393831/1 "2026-01-19T21:31:26Z")
As of June 4, Let’s Encrypt stopped sending email notifications about failing renewals, which was the only reason to have that ENV variable set.
> **[Ending Support for Expiration Notification Emails](https://letsencrypt.org/2025/01/22/ending-expiration-emails)**
>
> Since its inception, Let’s Encrypt has been sending expiration notification emails to subscribers that have provided an email address to us. We will be ending this service on June 4, 2025. The decision to end this service is the result of the...
I just ran `discourse-setup-ruby` and didn’t get a email address for `LETSENCRYPT_ACCOUNT_EMAIL` and now Discourse won’t work because the clever logic refuses to request a certification if there’s no email address. It’s been almost a year since including an email address in that variable did anything.
So this `if` needs to be deleted:
>
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### Author:  [@Ethsim2](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ethsim2)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2026, 10:03pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/letsencrypt-account-email-no-longer-needed/393831/2 "2026-01-19T22:03:53Z")
i noticed this on rebuild yesterday, i had to run `.\launcher rebuild app` after a seemingly successful `.\discourse-setup`. Looking forward to the fix you’ve mentioned 👍
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2026, 10:08pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/letsencrypt-account-email-no-longer-needed/393831/3 "2026-01-19T22:08:39Z")
> [@Ethsim2](#):
>
> Looking forward to the fix you’ve mentioned
Well, the easiest thing to do in the short term is just include an email address–any email address–in `LETSENCRYPT_ACCOUNT_EMAIL`.
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### Author:  [@Ethsim2](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ethsim2)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2026, 10:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/letsencrypt-account-email-no-longer-needed/393831/4 "2026-01-19T22:12:02Z")
what made us support renewal emails, when renewal happens automatically via the `acme.sh` cron job ?
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2026, 10:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/letsencrypt-account-email-no-longer-needed/393831/5 "2026-01-19T22:17:39Z")
> [@Ethsim2](#):
>
> what made us support renewal emails, when renewal happens automatically via the `acme.sh` cron job ?
The renewal emails were for a service, that was once provided by let’s encrypt, to notify you if your certificate was about to expire (see link above). There was really no reason for that test for `LETSENCRYPT_ACCOUNT_EMAIL` to be included when it was added 6 months ago.
I think that originally (8 years ago or so) Let’s Encrypt required an email address, which is why the test for it ever existed. For a long time, if you didn’t supply an email address, they’d not give you a cert.
There were some issues having to do with the nginx config that were breaking the renewals, even though the cron job was running (at least, I think that’s what it was; I didn’t pay careful attention to those updates, or I’d have brought this up then)
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2026, 4:02pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/letsencrypt-account-email-no-longer-needed/393831/6 "2026-01-20T16:02:02Z")
Fixed in
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse\_docker/pull/1028](https://github.com/discourse/discourse_docker/pull/1028)
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [January 24, 2026, 11:00am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/letsencrypt-account-email-no-longer-needed/393831/7 "2026-01-24T11:00:42Z")
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