Are Free SSL Certificates Really Good Enough for Your Website?

there are three different types of ssl certificates domain validation organization validation and extended validation all of which will give your website secure https most of these cost money while sometimes you can get domain validation certificates for free my question is are free ssl certificates good enough or is it worth the extra money to pay for one we will get into the specific differences between the certificate types later on but first let's see how much some of these certificates cost paid domain validation ssl certificates cost anywhere from seven dollars all the way up to two hundred and fifty dollars per year organization validation ssl certificates range from nineteen dollars to three hundred and fifty dollars per year and extended validation ssls cost the most the most expensive ssl certificate i could find was this ev1 from digicert for over seventeen hundred dollars whereas you can get them for as low as seventy dollars from somewhere like namecheap now like i said you can actually get a domain validation ssl certificate for free which we will talk about that in a bit so keep this in mind as we now take a look at the actual differences between these certificate types as the name suggests the main difference between dv ov and ev ssls is in the validation that happens prior to the certificate issuance for dv one must demonstrate that they own the domain name for ov one must demonstrate that they own the business associated with the domain name and for ev a bunch of additional business related information must be confirmed before the certificate is issued now from my security perspective all ssl certificates serve the same exact purpose which is to encrypt traffic between your website and users in general there is no improvement in security between dv ov and evssl certificates in other words each certificate type is essentially identical when it comes to security and when you peel back the marketing you can actually see this where the same encryption algorithms are being used regardless of whether it's a dvov or evssl so if you're getting the same level of security why would you ever pay for an ssl certificate well back in the day browsers used to prominently distinguish websites that used extended validation by displaying their company name next to the lock icon but as of late 2019 google chrome and pretty much every other major web browser stopped showing this because it did not protect users as intended since users did not make more secure choices such as not entering passwords or credit card information when the company name was removed today at least for google chrome a website visitor must click on the lock icon connection is secure certificate is valid and then details to see this information https might mean that a website is secure but it does not indicate any type of trustworthiness so for most websites and small businesses i personally don't see any value in getting anything other than a domain validation ssl and additionally with all certificate types being equal from a security standpoint i don't see any reason to pay for the certificate either a non-profit certificate authority called let's encrypt which is backed by many notable sponsors including the linux foundation has taken the traditional ssl certificate industry by storm over the past few years by offering free automated domain validation ssl certificates many web hosting platforms have begun to incorporate let's encrypt certificates into their platforms while any self-hosted website can get their own free ssl certificate in just a matter of minutes i personally use let's encrypt ssl certificates exclusively on all of my websites and one question i had was how search engines like google perceive the different ssl certificate types and whether they preferred paid ssl search to free ones and then i found this video of john mueller a webmaster trends analyst at google answering this exact question do you think different type of ssl is also important for seo now or just free ssl or enough free ssl is is perfectly fine uh so the different types of certificates is is more a matter of kind of like i don't know like what you want to do with a certificate but from our point of view we just watch out for is this a valid certificate or not and all of these certificates are valid if you want to get set up with a free ssl certificate for your website i have a bunch of videos on this channel to get you going and a whole bunch of other videos to help you with other aspects of your website [Music]

Channel: Tony Teaches Tech

Views: 6,387

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Id: yjk36fv3Km4

Length: 4min 49sec (289 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 01 2022