hosting
POST /v1/sites/{siteId}/ssl/external
Install an SSL certificate the customer obtained elsewhere.
Authentication
Send an API key as a bearer token. The key must carry the sites.manage permission; a key without it is refused with 403, not 404.
This endpoint takes no organisation id. Your key already identifies the organisation it belongs to, and the response is scoped to it.
Try it
Replace anything in angle brackets with your own values, and the key placeholder with a key from your dashboard.
curl -X POST https://api.zinndigital.com/v1/sites/{siteId}/ssl/external \
-H "Authorization: Bearer zdk_live_…" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{ "name": <string>, "certificate": <string>, "key": <string>, "ca": <string> }'Signed in? The API console in your dashboard fills in your real organisation id and your own key, and runs the request against the live API so you can see the actual response. Open this endpoint in the API console
Details
Installs a third-party certificate against one of the domain names on the site's hosting package, and returns the site's whole TLS state so the client re-renders from the server's answer. The free certificate (`enableSiteFreeSsl`) covers most customers; this is for one they already bought, or an EV/OV certificate their compliance requires. **This endpoint is deliberately stricter than the hosting platform behind it.** The upstream accepts an expired certificate, and one whose names do not include the domain it is installed against, answering success to both — after which every visitor to the site is shown a security warning. Measured against the live platform, 2026-08-21. Both are refused here, `422`, before the upstream is called, because nothing downstream refuses them. Also refused `422`, each in its own words: a private key that does not belong to the certificate, a missing or malformed CA chain, and a certificate that is not yet valid. The upstream reports every one of those as a single undifferentiated server error, which is not something a customer can act on. **The CA chain is required, not optional** — it is the `intermediate` or `chain` file the certificate authority supplies alongside the certificate, and an install without it fails. Unlike the free certificate this is **not** gated on the domain being delegated to us: a supplied certificate needs no validation challenge, so a customer whose DNS lives elsewhere can still use it. That is often exactly why they are here. There is no removal operation, because the platform has none. To go back, request the free certificate again with `enableSiteFreeSsl` — it replaces what is stored. `404` for a site with no vendor hosting package. Requires `sites.manage`.
Parameters
| Name | Type | Required | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
siteId (path) | Uuid | Yes | Site ID (UUIDv7). |
Request body
| Name | Type | Required | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
name | string | Yes | The domain name on the package to install against. It must already be one of the site's names; anything else is refused `422` naming the names that are available, rather than pa… |
certificate | string | Yes | The certificate, PEM-encoded, including its `-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----` and `-----END CERTIFICATE-----` lines. Surrounding whitespace is normalised rather than rejected — the… |
key | string | Yes | The certificate's private key, PEM-encoded. **Write-only and never returned by any operation**: it is passed to the hosting platform, which stores the bundle, and is not persist… |
ca | string | Yes | The CA chain — the `intermediate` or `chain` file from the certificate authority. May contain several concatenated certificates, and all of them are checked. Required. |
Response
| Name | Type | Required | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
available | boolean | Yes | Whether the package type exposes a certificate surface at all. False renders an explanation rather than an empty list, so "nothing has been issued yet" and "not part of this pla… |
certificates | SiteSslCertificate[] | Yes | The certificates installed on the package. |
force_https | boolean | Yes | Whether plain HTTP is redirected to HTTPS, or null when the package does not report the setting. Null is a third state the client must render as unknown: an unchecked toggle wou… |
free_ssl_permitted | boolean | Yes | Whether this package type permits requesting the free certificate. An absent vendor capability means **refused**, never "probably on" — the refusal is ours, in our words, before… |
force_ssl_permitted | boolean | Yes | Whether this package type permits changing HTTPS enforcement. |
external_ssl_permitted | boolean | Yes | Whether this package type permits installing a certificate the customer obtained elsewhere (`installSiteExternalSsl`). Reported separately from `free_ssl_permitted` because they… |
Errors this endpoint can return
401 · 403 · 404 · 409 · 422 · 429 · 503