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SSL certificates

Most sites need the free certificate. Some need more than that.

Every hosting plan here comes with a free certificate that browsers trust, issued and renewed automatically. A paid certificate buys two things the free one cannot give you: a warranty, and a vetted organisation name behind the padlock.

Compare the four levels Hosting with SSL included
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Four levels, one decision

What each level actually validates

Every certificate below encrypts the connection identically. What separates them is how much the issuer checks about you before signing, and that is the only thing a visitor can see.

Included with hosting

Free (DV)

Freewith any hosting plan

Blogs, brochure sites, anything without a checkout.

What the issuer checks: That you control the domain. Nothing about who you are.

  • Issued and renewed automatically
  • Same encryption as any paid certificate
  • No warranty, no company name
Comes with hosting
Paid DV

Domain validated

From $9.99per year

Sites that want a warranty behind the certificate.

What the issuer checks: Domain control, same as the free one, but backed by a commercial warranty.

  • Issued in minutes
  • Warranty from the certificate authority
  • Single domain
See DV certificates
Business

Organisation validated

From $35.00per year

Companies taking payments or handling customer data.

What the issuer checks: Your organisation exists, at the address you claim, reachable on a listed number.

  • Company name recorded in the certificate
  • Takes a few business days
  • Higher warranty
See OV certificates
Strictest

Extended validation

From $168.00per year

Finance, healthcare, anywhere trust is the product.

What the issuer checks: Full legal, operational and physical verification of the business.

  • The most thorough vetting available
  • Highest warranty tier
  • Longest to issue
See EV certificates
Covering subdomains instead? A wildcard certificate secures every subdomain on one name (shop, mail, staging and the rest) from $89.00 a year. That is a separate axis from the four levels above: wildcards exist at DV and OV validation both.

Worth knowing before you buy

What a paid certificate does not do

Encryption is identical

A $9 certificate and a $500 certificate negotiate the same TLS. Paying more buys validation and warranty, not stronger cryptography.

Browsers stopped showing the green bar

EV once turned the address bar green with a company name. Chrome, Firefox and Safari removed that years ago; the vetting still means something in a dispute, but visitors will not see it.

It does not make a site secure

TLS protects data in transit. It does nothing about an outdated plugin, a weak password or a leaky form. A padlock on a compromised site is still a padlock.

SEO benefit is a tiebreaker, not a lever

HTTPS is a confirmed but very light ranking signal, and every competitor already has it. Nobody outranks anyone by buying a more expensive certificate.

If the free certificate covers what you need, take it and spend the money elsewhere. We would rather say that now than process a refund later.

Straight answers

Which one do you need?

When the free certificate is enough, when it is not, what validation buys, and what happens if one expires.

Yes. Every hosting plan includes a free domain-validated certificate that is issued and renewed automatically, and browsers trust it exactly as they trust a paid one. Most sites need nothing more.

Two reasons, and neither is encryption. A paid certificate carries a warranty from the issuing authority, and organisation-validated certificates record your verified company details, which matters when a customer or an auditor asks who is behind the site.

No. The encryption is the same. What differs is how much the certificate authority verified before signing, and what they will pay out if they get it wrong.

DV checks that you control the domain, and issues in minutes. OV also verifies that your organisation exists at the address you gave, which takes a few business days. EV adds legal and operational vetting on top and takes longest. The comparison above sets out who each one suits.

Only if you are securing subdomains: shop.example.com, mail.example.com and so on. One wildcard covers them all on a single name, from $89.00 a year. For a single site at one address, it is money you do not need to spend.

The free and paid DV certificates issue within minutes once domain control is confirmed. OV usually takes one to three business days, EV longer, because a person has to verify the business before it is signed.

No, in practice the opposite. TLS adds a small handshake cost, but HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 require HTTPS, and both are faster than the plain HTTP they replaced. A site on HTTPS today is not paying a speed penalty.

Browsers show a full-page warning and most visitors leave. The free certificate renews itself, so this is a risk that belongs to paid certificates: we send renewal reminders, and auto-renew is available on the ones that support it.