Subscribe to the InCommon Certificate Service

Subscribing to the InCommon Certificate Service

InCommon offers the InCommon Certificate Service to the higher education community, providing unlimited server and personal certificates at a low, fixed fee. The cert service is open to:

Any higher education institution with its primary location in the United States, and that qualifies for a primary domain name in .edu.
Not-for-profit regional research and education networking organizations in the United States.

1. Are you already an InCommon Participant?

You can check here to see if your institution participates in InCommon.
If you are already an InCommon Participant, skip to Step #3 .
If you are not an InCommon Participant, go to step #2.

2. Join InCommon

InCommon participation is required prior to subscribing to the certificate service. Participation is open to two- and four-year degree-granting academic institutions that are accredited by a U.S. Department of Education Regional Institutional Accrediting Agency.

InCommon participation requires completing the InCommon Participation Agreement and submitting a one-time registration fee and an annual fee. The Join InCommon web page has a step-by-step guide to the process.

3. Complete the Subscriber Addendum

Once you have joined InCommon, you are ready to complete the subscriber addendum to subscribe to the cert service.

Review the certificate service fee schedule.
Complete the certificate service subscriber addendum [DOC].
Send the completed addendum by email (admin AT incommon DOT org), fax (734-913-4255) or postal mail (InCommon, 1000 Oakbrook Drive, Suite 300, Ann Arbor MI 48104).

4. InCommon will Countersign the Subscriber Addendum

5. Payment of Annual Fee

InCommon will email an invoice for payment of the first year’s Certificate Service annual fee. Subsequent invoices for years two and three will be emailed about a month prior to the subscriber anniversary date. As the fee schedule demonstrates, fees are based on an institution's Carnegie classification.

6. Appointment of Registration Authority Officer(s)

InCommon will contact your campus InCommon Executive contact, who will appoint up to three Registration Authority Officers (RAO). RAOs have access to the Certificate Manager (CM) interface with administrative control, the ability to issue certificates, the ability to appoint Department Registration Authority Officers (DRAO), and other responsibilities.
Each campus can appoint a maximum of three RAOs for the entire certificate service. These RAOs will manage SSL, EV, client, and all other types of certificates.
InCommon will identity-proof the RAO(s) and issue credentials via telephone.

7. Manage Your Domains via the CM

The RAO(s) now have access to the Certificate Manager (CM). The first step is to register your domain(s), a process that we outline on a separate web page.