Hacker News Reader

Comment by dasil003 | Hacker News Reader

This is probably a good time to piggyback an Ask HN: What are the best SSL providers these days with regards to price/hassle vs device/browser coverage?

I'm ashamed to say my company is still on VeriSign (ie. Network Solutions) simply out of inertia because by the time we realize the cert is near expiring there's no time to evaluate and switch providers.

View on HN

For noncommercial websites, https://www.startssl.com/ offers free certificates.

For commercial websites, the cheapest certificates I've seen are PositiveSSL certificates resold by gogetssl [1]. It's $4.55 for one year or $17.25 for 5 years.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with either site. I've never used gogetssl, but I will probably give them a shot the next time I need a certificate.

[1] https://www.gogetssl.com/domain-validation/comodo-positive-s...

StartSSL has a good deal for commercial websites too - for $120/year you get unlimited certs, including wildcard.

Only downside is they do proper identity checking which is a bit painful to go through (they will need to see official company documents, verify ID by phone etc) - but worth it in the long run IMO.

Yeah and sometimes they just drop the ball on the ID check. I didn't have a bill ready that has my physical address on it (none of my bills print this info) so they said they'd send me a piece of mail with a code in it. Never showed up, all attempts to contact them were ignored. Ended up just getting an $8 cert somewhere.

I will say that once you do get into StartSSL (which I have through a previous company), it's nice to be able to create/sign unlimited certs.

They also are located in Israel which can add a few days to verification if you can't do it online or via phone.

They're all pretty much the same. Browser support for the big issuers is pretty near universal, even on mobile. Choose the cheapest reseller you like. No matter who you buy through, you end up in the same request/validation process on the actual issuer's site after purchasing.

I usually buy from Namecheap just because they already have my cards on file.

https://www.namecheap.com/security/ssl-certificates/comodo.a...

Same prices at SSLs.com (used to be cheapssls.com).

http://www.ssls.com/

An SSL cert costs between $5 and $10 per year depending if you're willing to prepay multiple years. Wildcard certs are around $100/year.

At work we use digicert -- good site with support for corp stuff like separate accounts for accounting/ops/etc, expiry notification, etc.

For personal stuff I use alphassl.

Another vote for Digicert for corp certificates - their support team is top-notch and if you opt to chain to Entrust you get browser support back through 1999, if you need to support older devices.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com