Recommended certificate provider

Is there such a thing as a "libre" certificate authority or provider? I realize that once I put a browser-recognized certificate on my site that every visit calls back to the certificate issuer so they know all of my traffic stats and having a certificate gives the issuer the power to revoke it and kill my site. Torvalds and friends with Lets Encrypt offer one for free, and most GNU/Linux distro sites use the Lets Encrypt certificate, except for RMS personal site which uses Comodo. Just curious about anyone's thoughts here as to the best way to deal with purchasing a certificate. I have used a self-signed certificate but it's not good for public-facing sites and asking people to import it into their browser is a hassle.