Free or Paid SSL Certificate Services?

BillEssley

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What is the different between Free or Paid SSL Certificate services? Cloudflare and Letenscrypt are offering free SSL certificate, will this kill SSL companies offering paid SSL services?
 

RoseHosting

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There are more differences, but the main ones are:

  • Paid SSLs have a longer validity period. So you don't have to renew them every 90 days or so.
  • There are paid EV (extended validation) SSLs, but there are no free EV SSLs.
  • Paid SSLs have better liability insurance (protection).
  • Some paid SSL providers offer premium support. Free SSL providers mostly offer community support.
 

RDO Servers

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When choosing, a lot depends on your needs.

If this is for a personal site, portfolio, blog, forum, etc, then a free SSL should be fine.

However, if this is for a business, I would recommend a paid SSL, preferable a EV SSL.
 

VirtuBox

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What is the different between Free or Paid SSL Certificate services? Cloudflare and Letenscrypt are offering free SSL certificate, will this kill SSL companies offering paid SSL services?
For DV Certificates, the only difference between paid and free certificates are the price. Encryption settings can be better with letsencrypt than with paid DV certificates.
So if you are looking for a certificate other than EV (with the green bar), free certificates are the best choice, for a blog or for a business it doesn't matter.
 

tinrmz15

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Go for Paid SSL certificates so that you will not have problems in the future with renewing the contract. It also guarantees customers with secure protection and premium support, which are perfect for business purposes. however, you can also go for free certificates if you might want to use it for personal purposes and minimal use. However, you might need to renew it every 3 months.
 

David Beroff

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David Beroff
You are right but this will work for some but some will want to use free SSL service because they don't have more money to buy this service while there are SSL providers are offering it for free.
Anyway, I also have to agree with you that buying a paid ssl cert will have better support and protections.
 

JFSG

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CloudFlare and Let's Encrypt don't give you any site seal or warranty. As a free cert, it is embarrassing for any commercial website to be using them on their public site as well. In addition, they don't offer organisation validated and extended validation certs, which is where paid certs come into play.
 

AaronSmith

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Free SSL Certificate is issued and signed by a popular Certificate Authority (CA) such as Let's Encrypt, StartSSL, WoSign etc. While, Paid SSL Certificate is issued and signed by trusted Certificate Authority (CA) such as Comodo, GeoTrust, Symantec, RapidSSL, Thawte, GlobalSign, AlphaSSL etc..

You can get Paid SSL from directly through either trusted Certificate Authority or authorized SSL reseller (Reseller offers SSL certificates at up to 89% cheaper price)

Site owner gets the same level of encryption with free SSL or Paid SSL certificate. However, Free SSL Cert is issued for 30-90 days validity, while paid SSL Cert is issued for a period of 1-3 years.

Free SSL CA follows only domain validation method through verifying the identity of website owner before issuing the certificate, while Paid SSL CA follows in-depth Organization Validation or Extended validation method of an organization before issuing the certificate for the particular domain.

Free SSL is ideal for blogs and small websites. Whereas, Paid SSLs can help to improve customer's trust and conversion rates on websites and ideal for large enterprises or e-commerce business.
 

24x7serverman

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SSL certificate is necessary for securing the web content and website. If you've your e-commerce site n which you and your clients need to share the contact information, credit card, debit card details that time SSL is very important.

SSL certificate will encrypt the data between you and server with witch you are communicating so data won't be stolen in between the communication. That is why SSL certificate is used to display he green padlock in top left corner of the web-browser while you access your site with SSL certificate. If there is integration of payment gate way on your site then SSL certificate is very important..

Paid SSL certificate will be valid for some fixed time for which you've paid while Let's encrypt and other free SSL certificate will expire in 90 days.
Paid SSL certificates used to provide the solid green bar in the web browser which covers the all type of theft protection. The encryption in the paid SSL certificate is of high level rather than free SSL.
 
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