If, like most humans, you have spent any amount of time on the internet, at some point you have probably been shown a warning that a site isn’t secure. It looks like the image above.
Most sensible humans at this point will nope their way out of there and go visit another site. But what if the website is your business’ site? Visitors noping their way out of there before they have the chance to see your amazing landing page isn’t good for business.
That’s why you need an SSL certificate. An SSL certificates does 2 things for your site:
- Encrypts data between your visitor’s browser and your website
- Provides verification to the user’s browser, that the site they are visiting is being controlled by the server whose domain is in the url bar.
And maybe more importantly from a business’ perspective, visitors aren’t shown a security notice from their browser.
But if you ask your visitors for any kind of information, like their name in a form. You should encrypt it, just out of common decency.
How much do SSL certificates cost?
Nothing!
Not the standard SSL certificates which are suitable for most sites. A standard SSL certificate will perform the two main functions of encryption and verification.
There exist SSL certificates that validate more than just your domain that do have costs associated with them, but these are used by larger organisations with greater security requirements or for compliance standards. It is unlikely these are the ones you need, especially if you are reading this.
My hosting company is asking me to pay for my SSL certificate.
Imagine renting a motel room in a dodgy neighbourhood and then the motel asks if you would like to pay extra for a lock on your door. That’s what charging for SSL certificates seems like to us in the modern world of hosting.
Whilst it’s true in the past you had to pay for SSL certificates, and one’s that validate more than just your domain still can cost money, standard SSL certificates have been free for some time.
The process of obtaining one can be automated fairly easily by your server. If your hosting company doesn’t offer free automated SSL certificates, you should look for a different hosting company. Like us :). We offer free SSL certificates for all our hosting. We will set them up for you so you don’t have to do a thing.