What's the cheapest way to get an SSL certificate?

December 23, 2004 10:52 AM

What's the cheapest way to get an SSL certificate (for serving HTTPS connections)? Obviously I'd want the company selling these certs to be listed in most browsers as a trusted authority.
posted by LukeyBoy to computers & internet (12 comments total)

GeoTrust is pretty cheap.
posted by cmonkey at 10:54 AM on December 23, 2004

Do you need a dedicated cert? Lots of hosts now have shared certs on their servers. But Tucows has some cheap ones available through many of their resellers. On preview - GeoTrust is good too.
posted by FlamingBore at 10:55 AM on December 23, 2004

I paid $50 for the metafilter cert last year (which expired and I'm lazy) from a geotrust reseller. I never heard any complaints from users that didn't get real https support.
posted by mathowie at 10:56 AM on December 23, 2004

Do you know which GeoTrust reseller Matt? I checked the page and saw nothing cheaper than 169USD. It's significantly less than Versign yet a lot more than fifty bucks :-)

The certificate is for a dedicated server, so the hosting provider can't offer me much.
posted by LukeyBoy at 12:17 PM on December 23, 2004

LukeyBoy - How about this offer at Ev1?
posted by FlamingBore at 12:52 PM on December 23, 2004

Looks good FlamingBore... I hope it's not limited to Ev1 subscribers. Thanks!
posted by LukeyBoy at 1:12 PM on December 23, 2004

FreeSSL. It's not exactly free, but is a GeoTrust reseller and dirt cheap. Plus they CA is accepted as trusted in all the major browsers.
posted by thebabelfish at 1:36 PM on December 23, 2004

Here's my answer to this question when it was asked in March. Probably still pretty current.
posted by nicwolff at 2:34 PM on December 23, 2004

RegisterFly has Starter SSL certs for 15.99/yr and Premiums for 99.99/yr.
posted by ronin21 at 7:20 PM on December 23, 2004

ah, comodo was the reseller I used.
posted by mathowie at 10:08 PM on December 23, 2004

I just used instantssl (premium cert), a comodo reseller, and have been very happy. Quick service and really cheap if you sign up for three years ($199).
posted by shawnmk at 12:25 AM on December 24, 2004

As nicwolff mentioned in his previous post, I typically use Thawte certificates when browser support and security are critical (regardless of their Verisign ownership).

That being said, I've never tried Comodo but after reading this, and the previous thread, I'll give them a shot the next time I need a certificate.
posted by purephase at 7:36 PM on December 24, 2004