Free SSL vs Paid SSL

Here we’ll discuss the differences with Free SSL vs Paid SSL. Free SSL vs Paid SSL is something that is talked about all over the place, so we’ll get to the main point of why you want a Free SSL certificate.

Advantages of Free SSL

  • Free
  • Quick to issue – within minutes
  • Did we mention free?

Disadvantages of Free SSL

  • No Support
  • Need renewals every 90 days from some free SSL providers
  • You will need to be on top of your renewal dates, as they don’t send you any expiration date or any management interface. If they expire, your site will be listed as not secure prompting a browser error.
  • No guarantee or warranty
  • No insurance
  • No verification of business. You might be dealing with a site that is secured by SSL, meaning its safe to purchase from. However there is nothing to guarantee that the website/company you are purchasing from is a legit business. This is a whole new problem in itself.

Paid SSL

Purchasing an SSL certificate from an authorized Certificate Authority, means that they’ve gone through a bunch of checks to make sure they are in fact distributing secure certificates. There are many CA’s that sell certificates such as:

Verisign
GeoTrust
Digicert

Advantages of Paid SSL

  • Support
  • Management of SSL certificate renewals
  • Warranty

Disadvantages of Paid SSL

  • Can be expensive

Keep in mind that not all SSL certificates are made equal. You will find out that some may even start from $10 per year, all the way up to $1500 per year!

Summary

We suggest if you’re running a small simple site or blog without e-commerce, you can start of with the Free SSL. Once you’re going into transactions online, you should go straight to the paid ones. We usually recommend the Geotrust or Digitcert ones which start at around $150 per year.

Our cPanel Plans, Plesk Plans, support Free SSL. If you’re on our older platforms, please contact us and we can migrate you over.