SSL Certificates

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, it is cryptographic protocol that provide security and data integrity for communications over networks such as the Internet. Data sent via an SSL connection is protected by encryption, a mechanism that prevents eavesdropping and tampering with any transmitted data. Having an SSL on your site makes businesses and consumers eager to submit their confidential details over a web site e.g. credit card or other payment details for e-commerce web sites or other personal details shared for sign in to regular online services.

SSL Certificate ? An SSL Certificate establishes a private communication channel enabling encryption of the data during transmission. The higher encryption level is established, the better security you get. Encryption ? The site seal is an image provided by the Certificate Authority and can be placed on your website to ensure your customers are able to see that their details on the page are secured by the installed SSL certificate. Site Seal ? Secures multiple domains that share the same base domain name and reside on the same server. Wildcard ? The minimum years SSL Certificate can be registered for. Period ? This is the fee you have to pay to use this service for one year. Price per year  
RapidSSL 256 bit Yes No 1 year $25.95$30.88 Order
GeoTrust QuickSSL Premium 256 bit Yes No 1 year $145.00$172.55 Order
GeoTrust True BusinessID 256 bit Yes No 1 year $145.00$172.55 Order
GeoTrust TrueBizID with EV 256 bit Yes No 1 year $230.00$273.70 Order
GeoTrust QuickSSL 256 bit Yes No 1 year $105.00$124.95 Order
GeoTrust TrueBizID Wildcard 256 bit Yes Yes 1 year $570.00$678.30 Order

Buyers and online service users are getting more and more cautious when they browse, do their shopping online or just use online services. When it comes to submitting private details online most of the people are looking for the padlock icon on the bottom of their browser, even they look for the "https://" prefix in their browser's address bar before sharing any information. If your web site does not support encrypted connection and does not have valid SSL Certificate, your visitors may leave your web site without making any purchase or free of charge service signup. They simply do not feel confident to submit their credit card or other personal details over web sites that seem not to be well secured. You can change this, return you customers trust and increase your buyers and online users by purchasing a valid SSL Certificate.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) issued by a trusted authority such as RapidSSL or GeoTrust is installed on your domain's hostname i.e. secure.domain.com. When there is a client of yours that browse over https://secure.domain.com the connection between the browser and the server is encrypted with 128, 256 bit key. Any data send between your client's browser and the server is encrypted before sending and decrypted after received on the server. In that way information transmitted over the Internet is encrypted and signed as secured by this trusted authority. Browser when sending data over https:// checks the validity of the SSL Certificate with the issuance authority. SSL technology protects your Web site and makes it easy for your Web site visitors to trust you.

Valid SSL Certificate is a must if:

  • Your site is an online store and accepts credit card payments or other orders
  • Your site offers online services, subscribers has to go over signup process
  • Your site supports login to user accounts, containing private or secure details
  • Your site has any other type of transmitting client's data over the Internet

Regular SSL Certificates are issued and signed to secure single hostname of your domain. In other words you can use it only for one particular subdomain e.g. www.domain.com or secure.domain.com. If you want to have encrypted secure connection over several subdomains you need Wildcard SSL Certificate. It can be used to secure multiple (as much as you have) subdomains on a single domain name.