Cheap, yes cheap wildcard SSL?

woodp

woodp

New Member
Thought I'd poll the community to see if I could solicit some assistance.

Earlier I found out that for mail over SSL, I need a wildcard certificate. Turns out a standard certificate won't support IMAP's SSL requirement with just domain.com or host.domain.com. I need a wildcard to support both.

Since I don't run any commerce sites, I really don't care about expensive "badges" or "guarantees." I just want to run Outlook without "security certificate that can't be verified" error messages.

Standard certs are available in the $25/year range but wildcards start at $100/yr and go up. That's a lot just to remove an Outlook warning.

Does anyone have familiarity with a low-cost (cheap) wildcard SSL provider?
 
Yeah, I like their $7 cert price, but less thrilled about their $85 wildcard price.

I don't get the 10:1 price differential between standard and wildcard SSL???
 
If I had to guess "It's because they can" :) it does seem a little odd, though it is under your $100 from your other supplier.

Dave G
 
Yes, I purchased an AlphaSSL cert but I needed Knownhost help to install it. It was non-standard.

The Outlook warnings have gone away which was my only concern, so to that end I'd say their offering was suitable.
 
Appreciate all the feedback. Thank you!

But I still don't have a straight answer to the question of *why* I need wildcard in the first place - I only have one IP and all my IMAP email (regardless of email address) passes through host.domain.com. To my way of thinking, host.domain.com is *one* domain. Why is it necessary to install a multi-site cert?
 
Hi woodp,

Your VPS can host multiple domains. When doing so each email client configures for their own mail server.

So even though all your domains and even your host name reside on the same IP number they all have different names.

host.domain.com
mail.domain1.com
mail.domain2.com
etc etc

A multi-domain SSL certificate can cover each one of them so that when a client opens up his email client (IE Outlook) they don't get a popup warning them about the SSL certificate not matching the configured domain name.

Does that help?
 
Does that help?
Click to expand...

Almost ... If I enforce an SSL-only mail policy (host.domain.com, IMAP Port: 993, POP3 Port: 995, SMTP Port: 465), then can I get away with a single domain SSL cert? Or am I just creating new problems for myself?
 
Only if all of your clients for all of your domains configure for the same mail server which is host.domain.com if you put the cert on that.

At least that's how I understand it. Please someone chime in if I am incorrect.
 
This is my first post to forum but i could not stop to write when i read different recommendation from other users. As i have been involved in Information technology, i have had installed various SSL certificates for our clients. To answer your question, i did small research and compared price of wildcard ssl certificate from different vendors like: thawte, rapidssl, alphassl etc! To my surprise, i found that the authorized resellers are offering very huge discount on same certificate. Let me explain in details:

Look at the price of Alphassl here on this website: https://www.ssl2buy.com/alphassl-wildcard.php that sells the same wildcard ssl at $49 which is around $100 cheaper as compare to AlphaSSL official website http://www.alphassl.com/ssl-certificates/wildcard-ssl.html

Then i searched for other resellers like Trustico, servertastic, clickssl etc and found that the best place to buy any ssl certificate is their authorized resellers and not direct CA.
 
Basic ssl are dirt cheap, but provide only the minimal amount of security required. I would advise you to get the more advanced one which gives you the "gren bar" in the address bar, so instead of just a padlock, you get a padlock and your company name like Google Inc. Because your company information is verified by the SSL issuing company.

Greater security.

SSL is a funny world though, admittedly I don't know much about it, but when I needed a ssl, I contacted verisgn, and they were quoting something ridiculous, upwards of 1K for a ssl, they probably bundled all sorts of additional extras that I didn't need. read more information Cheap Wildcard SSL
 
Doesn't the green bar require a ~$1000 cert? The last time I checked no major browser showed a difference between a cheapo $7 cert and a ~$200 cert *unless* you clicked the lock icon to look at the details. Do I recall it right?
 
To get the green address bar SSL cert it's only $99.99/year through my reseller program at www.PickleHost.com
However, like most companies (I've yet to find one that does) they don't offer a wild card cert for a green address bar.
 
Cool, glad to know that phpAddict. Except now I can no longer say, "just get the $7 cert!"

Also, my memory was wrong, I looked back at my notes and had $200 as the cheapest EV back then. Only the crazy Verisign and Thwate pricing was $1000 (I think).
 
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