How to Choose the Best Basic SSL Certificate

We’ll compare the top five basic SSL certificates for your personal or eCommerce site

If you’re looking for a basic SSL certificate, you have so many options to choose from. But when it comes to basic SSL certificate prices, certificate costs can span the gamut because of a variety of factors including brand name, warranty, site seals, and other essentials that you can only get when buying a commercial SSL certificate from the right site.

We don’t want to keep you waiting — let’s talk about basic SSL certificates and then dive into comparing the five best ones, including which has the best basic SSL certificate price.

What is a Basic SSL Certificate?

Before we can talk about what constitutes the “best” or “top” basic SSL certificate, you first need to understand what a basic SSL certificate actually entails. Just keep in mind that you’re getting the same level of encryption no matter what SSL certificate you get. All of our certificates meet or exceed industry encryption standards because they use SHA-2, AES symmetric encryption and either RSA or ECDHE public key encryption. So, no matter whether which certificate you use, it still offers the same encryption.

Where the certificates vary is in terms of their validation level (we’ll get to that momentarily) and functionality (what they secure).

Validation

The most basic SSL certificates are those that protect a single domain on a dedicated or shared IP address. Typically, these also are domain validated certificates. Not sure what that means? Every SSL certificate is issued by a certificate authority (CA) with a specific level of validation:

• domain validation (DV),
• organization validation (OV), and
• extended validation (EV).

The first is considered a basic SSL certificate because only the domain is verified by the issuing CA. This process is automated and only takes a few minutes. The next, OV, is considered basic business validation because it requires not only the domain to be validated but some basic information about the requesting business. This means that you can assert greater identity with client browsers, which increases trust. This type of certificate typically requires one to three days for issuance.

The third and final type of validation, EV, takes this verification process and takes it to a whole new level. This in-depth process takes upwards of five days for a CA to complete and involves everything from verification phone calls to possibly requiring an opinion letter. That’s because it asserts the greatest amount of identity with your site visitors’ browsers.

Functionality

Certificates are also categorized in terms of what they secure. Some SSL certificates secure just a single domain, whereas others (multi domain) secure multiple domains or an unlimited number of single-level subdomains (wildcards). Not to mention there are also certificates that cover multiple domains and their subdomains (multi domain wildcards).

The Top 5 Basic SSL Certificate Options from CheapSSLonline

We offer a variety of certificates from multiple industry-leading certificate authorities. As such, one of the benefits of purchasing a certificate from us is that not only do you have a wide selection, but you also get to enjoy several other great benefits on all of our SSL certificates:

• unlimited server licenses,
• unlimited reissuances,
• a 15-day money-back guarantee from CheapSSLsecurity.com,
• optional SSL installation support,
• 24/7/365 phone, email and web support, and
• the best basic SSL certificate prices available on the web – guaranteed.

In this article, we’ll focus on the most basic certificates in both the DV and OV categories because they typically have the best basic SSL certificate prices. Let’s take a look:

Basic SSL Certificate #1: Comodo PositiveSSL

The Comodo PositiveSSL certificate is a basic SSL certificate with the best price. This DV cert is also our most popular — and it’s easy to see why. At a cost of only $5.45 per year, you can secure a single domain (both the WWW and non-WWW versions of it) while also enjoying:

• fast certificate issuance (within minutes),
• a $10,000 warranty,
• a static Positive SSL site seal, and
• compatibility with 99.9% of mobile and web browsers.

Basic SSL Certificate #2: GeoTrust True BusinessID

If you’re looking for something that offers greater protection in terms of a warranty, then you’ll want to know about GeoTrust True BusinessID. This OV certificate secures a single domain for just $52.00 per year – or the equivalent of $0.14 per day! However, it comes with other benefits as well:

• certificate issuance time in one to three days,
• a whopping $1.25 million warranty,
• a dynamic GeoTrust site seal, and
• compatibility with 99.9% of mobile and web browsers.

Basic SSL Certificate #3: Thawte SSL 123

If you don’t want a warranty quite that big — or don’t want to pay quite as much but are still looking for a great DV certificate — then look no further than Thawte SSL 123. This certificate costs only $28.44 per year and still secures the WWW and non-WWW versions of your single domain. It also comes with:

• fast certificate issuance (within minutes),
• a $500,000 warranty,
• A dynamic Thawte trusted site seal, and
• compatibility with 99.9% of mobile and web browsers.

Basic SSL Certificate #4: Comodo PositiveSSL Wildcard

Looking for something to secure your many subdomains? We’ve got you covered with the Comodo PositiveSSL Wildcard. For only $52.95 per year, you can get a DV certificate that secures not only your domain but all of your domains on a single level! This means that you can secure www.yourdomain.com, blog.yourdomain.com, email.yourdomain.com, ftp.yourdomain.com, etc. You also get to enjoy:

• fast certificate issuance (within minutes)
• a $10,000 warranty,
• a static PositiveSSL site seal, and
• compatibility with 99.9% of mobile and web browsers.

Basic SSL Certificate #5: Sectigo OV SSL Multi Domain/UCC

Sectigo, formerly Comodo CA, is a leading name among certificate authorities. That’s why the Sectigo OV SSL Multi Domain/UCC certificate makes our list. This certificate helps you to secure multiple domains — one fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) and four subject alternative name domains (SANs) — for just $73.70 per year — that’s a savings of 74% compared to buying it straight from the CA. Furthermore, you can also purchase coverage to secure up to a total of 250 domains.

That’s a pretty sweet deal on its own. But there are a few other things that make this Sectigo SSL certificate stand out:

• certificate issuance time in one to three days,
• a generous $1 million warranty,
• a dynamic Sectigo Secure site seal, and
• compatibility with 99.9% of mobile and web browsers.