Most people know how important having a Secure Sockets Layer certificate is, however with most providers charging an arm and a leg, beginning webmasters with e-commerce sites may not even be able to afford a SSL certificate! Fortunately, there is hope. Despite common providers such as HostGator and GoDaddy charging $70 USD or more for a year’s worth of SSL certificate proof, you can check out some great places below and learn where to find some cheap (and trustworthy) SSL certificate providers!
Free SSL Providers
If you didn’t think you could get anything online for free, then think again. There are two free SSL providers listed here, however their protection is very minimal and is not near as high quality as a paid service. Both CAcert and StartSSL offer free SSL certifications, but the quality is very low. You should only use this if you are just starting out, or even testing; however if you have an ecommerce site you should definitely go for a paid certificate.
Cheap SSL Providers
Namecheap – Namecheap provides you with fairly affordable SSL certificates because it resells them instead of assigning a brand new one to you. If you are looking for a quick startup SSL certificate, this may be your best bet!
- RapidSSL – Costs $10.95 from Namecheap
- InstantSSL – Priced at $48.88
- QuickSSL – Will cost you just $48.88 as well
StartSSL – Another affordable SSL certificate option is going through StartSSL and getting a verified certificate. This provides an acceptable quality of certification and encryption, which should be enough for startup e-commerce websites, and a few others. If you are a smaller site, this should be perfect for you! Additionally, it only costs $49.90 for a full year’s worth of subscription, a certificate seal, and $10,000 worth of warranty on your website!
StandardSSL – Unfortunately the next cheapest SSL certificate provider is going to be GoDaddy with a standard SSL certificate costing you $49.99. Fortunately you get the certificate issued to you in mere minutes and you also get the seal of your certification on your site. A small downside for this service provided by GoDaddy is that you only have $2k worth of insurance, whereas with StartSSL you get a full ten grand. Overall, however, GoDaddy provides a very reliable and trusted SSL certificate for small and medium business owners.
RapidSSL – Instead of getting the startup or the standard SSL certificate, the next best option for a website owner would be to go for the RapidSSL certificate. This is a bit more expensive, however it features some of the best protection and encryption features above the rest. It does cost you a pretty penny, at $79 for the entire year, but for a medium to large e-commerce website, this is well worth it.
Conclusion
Unfortunately an SSL certificate is something that basically is a “you get what you pay for” item. The free certificates provide next to no coverage, however you can get a fairly cheap SSL certificates if you are a small e-commerce site. You may also check out Comodo SSL certificates for more secured and added protection of your websites.
