By Lucid12112
I have a small app running on a single Droplet and I’m currently handling HTTPS with Nginx + Let’s Encrypt directly on the server.
I noticed that DigitalOcean also offers Load Balancers with built-in SSL termination. For a simple setup, is there any real benefit to using a Load Balancer just for HTTPS?
Or is it perfectly fine to keep handling SSL on the Droplet itself?
Curious what others are doing in practice.
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Hi there,
For a single Droplet setup, it’s perfectly fine to handle HTTPS directly on the server with Nginx and Let’s Encrypt.
A Load Balancer usually starts making more sense when you want to put multiple Droplets behind it, offload SSL termination centrally, or make it easier to scale later.
If you’re just running one app on one server, adding a Load Balancer only for HTTPS would usually be extra complexity and extra cost without much benefit.
So for a simple setup, I’d keep SSL on the Droplet. If the app grows and you eventually want redundancy or multiple app servers, that’s when a Load Balancer becomes much more useful.
Heya, @lucid12112
For a single Droplet, Nginx + Let’s Encrypt is perfectly fine. A load balancer just for SSL termination on one server is overkill and an extra $12/mo you don’t need to spend.
The LB makes sense when you have multiple backend servers and need to distribute traffic. Until then, certbot auto-renews your certs and Nginx handles TLS with negligible overhead. No reason to change what’s working.
Regards
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