Ask HN: Why HTTPs certificates cost at least 50$? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why HTTPs certificates cost at least 50$?

5 pointstbarbugli12 comments

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They don't.

If you want to pay for one it costs about ten bucks a year: https://www.gandi.net/ssl/grid

If instead you want a free cert: http://www.startssl.com/

Well, if someone sells them for 100$ and startssl for free, there must be some difference in terms of service right?

Not really.

The more expensive certificates offer insurance, but if you read the small print you'll see that it isn't worth much.

Free startssl certs only run for a year. For me, it's worth paying for e.g. a 5 year one to put off the renewal faff.

You can't use the Free StartSSL certificate for commercial websites.

I can't seem to find that info on their page. Do you have a link?

If you want to pay for one it costs about ten bucks a year: https://www.gandi.net/ssl/grid

Also worth noticing is that SSL comes free for one year with domains bought at Gandi.

It's funny, I was just asking myself the same question and was poking around various sites to see what types of SSL certificate products were on offer. I found this site: http://www.sslshopper.com/article-top-10-ways-to-save-money-... as well as this page: http://www.sslshopper.com/cheapest-ev-ssl-certificates.html

Pretty much every large company uses VeriSign, which isn't cheap. Twitter, Apple and PayPal all use EV certificates (which make the url bar go green) from VeriSign which are between $1000 to $1500 each.

It kind of comes down to whether you want an EV cert or not. Certain sites are cheap for non-EV certs (Like Comodo), and others offer cheap EV certs (GeoTrust and DigiCert will sell you one for $300/year). The cheapest for everything seems to be GoDaddy, but, I guess caveat emptor.

Comodo PositiveSSL: $9/year, works with all modern browsers and email clients: https://www.namecheap.com/security/ssl-certificates/domain-v...

From my understanding, the prices vary usually because they are including insurance up to a certain amount if things go wrong with the certificate.

SSLs.com (formerly cheapssls.com) has them for reasonable prices like this one you can get for 5 bucks a year (which is ultimately issued by Comodo).

http://www.ssls.com/comodo-ssl-certificates/positivessl.html

what can go wrong with a certificate?

They could be insecure, fraudulently generated, not recognized by a substantial browser share, etc.

Google Comodo SSL fraud for a better picture.

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