Heroku SSL host not working (Heroku | No such app)

Question

I successfully used Letsencrypt to generate certificates and I uploaded them to Heroku using:

this-site ********$ heroku addons:create ssl:endpoint
Creating ssl-graceful-41756... done, ($20.00/month)
Adding ssl-graceful-41756 to this-site... done
Next add your certificate with `heroku certs:add CERT KEY`.
Use `heroku addons:docs ssl` to view documentation.

this-site ********$ sudo heroku certs:add /etc/letsencrypt/live/www.this-site.com/fullchain.pem /etc/letsencrypt/live/www.this-site.com/privkey.pem
Resolving trust chain... done
Adding SSL Endpoint to this-site... done
this-site now served by qwasf-34234.herokussl.com
Certificate details:
Common Name(s): www.this-site.com
Expires At:     2016-09-02 19:15 UTC
Issuer:         /C=US/O=Let's Encrypt/CN=Let's Encrypt Authority X3
Starts At:      2016-06-04 19:15 UTC
Subject:        /CN=www.this-site.com
SSL certificate is verified by a root authority.

However, when I visit qwasf-34234.herokussl.com, it is not working. It has a page that says: Heroku | No such app ; There is no app configured at that hostname. Perhaps the app owner has renamed it, or you mistyped the URL.

I am copy and pasting the exact new host that heroku gave me. Going to https://qwasf-34234.herokussl.com yields the same page.

I verified the certificate with:

this-site ********$ heroku certs
Endpoint                    Common Name(s)         Expires               Trusted
--------------------------  ---------------------  --------------------  -------
qwasf-34234.herokussl.com  www.this-site.com  2016-09-02 19:15 UTC  True

More checks:

this-site *******$ curl -kvI https://www.this-site.com
* Rebuilt URL to: https://www.michaelsutyak.com/
*   Trying 23.21.142.230...
* Connected to www.this-site.com (23.21.142.230) port 443 (#0)
* TLS 1.2 connection using TLS_********************
* Server certificate: *.herokuapp.com
* Server certificate: DigiCert ******
* Server certificate: DigiCert *******
> HEAD / HTTP/1.1
> Host: www.this-site.com
> User-Agent: curl/7.43.0
> Accept: */*
> 
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Server: Cowboy
Server: Cowboy
< Connection: keep-alive
Connection: keep-alive
< Vary: Accept-Encoding
Vary: Accept-Encoding
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
< Date: Sat, 04 Jun 2016 20:57:00 GMT
Date: Sat, 04 Jun 2016 20:57:00 GMT
< Via: 1.1 vegur
Via: 1.1 vegur

< 
* Connection #0 to host www.this-site.com left intact

What is going on here and how can this work? I just want https for my site.

Simone Carletti Simone Carletti · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-08T15:41:12

You cannot access the Heroku SSL endpoint directly. That endpoint represents the hostname where you need to point your domain to, as explained in the DNS and domain configuration of the Heroku article.

If you want to point a subdomain (e.g. www.this-site.com), then create a DNS record CNAME in your DNS hosting provider that points the www record to the Heroku SSL endpoint:

www CNAME qwasf-34234.herokussl.com

If you want to point the root domain (this-site.com), then you need to use a provide that supports the CNAME-like record for the root domain, as explained in this Heroku article as you can't use a CNAME for the root domain.

Make sure your domain is not still pointing to the herokuapp.com hostname.

You can test my assertion by sending a cURL request to the SSL endpoint, but passing the Host header (as the browser would do).

$ curl -i qwasf-34234.herokussl.com -H "Host: www.this-site.com"

Heroku SSL host not working (Heroku | No such app)

2 Answers