[imron]

How about storing the letsencrypt certificates in a data-container/locally on the host and mapping those files to the nginx container when you start it?

For the very first time, you can use let's encrypt's manual verification process, but then have the let's encrypt client set up to renew certs automatically (possibly even from a separate container) using same data file mappings.

[sandGorgon]

which is why im preferring to spend 10$ on a certificate instead (or rather 85$ for a wildcard).