Which SSL to Choose for a Website: Paid or Free?

An SSL certificate for any working site on the Internet is a necessity, without which it is difficult for a site to exist in search engines. Is free or paid SSL needed for your project? Let's compare the pros and cons of each of them and select the most reliable and safe option.

Features of Free Certificates

Today, a free certificate can be connected to any hosting service. The most popular free certificate provider is Lets Encrypt. To connect a certificate, you do not need to order a dedicated IP address or any additional services. Connection takes place directly in the control panel. The certificate is issued for a period of 3 months, but thanks to the enabled auto-renewal function, the certificate does not need to be manually renewed at the end of this period, it renews automatically.

Features of the free certificate from Lets Encrypt:

•     you need to renew the certificate every 3 months, but hosting providers enable automatic renewal for this;
•     no compensation payments in case of data breaches;
•     site owner verification is not available.

Who doesn't need a free website certificate?

•     sites that accept payments from customers online;
•     large companies;
•     sites that need a degree of Organization Validation (OV) or Extended Validation (EV). Lets Encrypt certificates provide Domain Level Validation (DV) only;
•     projects that need a high level of protection. In the history of free SSL, there have been cases when at one point they became untrusted by search engines and when they visited a site, users were notified that the site was Insecure.

What are the paid certificates and their types

Paid SSL certificate is a more stable and secure solution for protecting data transmission. Depending on the type of verification, the number of domains / subdomains, site protection or software, different types of certificates have been developed. There are also various certification centers for issuing certificates.

Paid certificates are issued for 1 year and require further manual renewal. The most popular today is the Sectigo (Comodo) Positive SSL certificate with a DV verification type to protect 1 domain. It's a great and safer alternative to a free certificate at a low cost. If you need protection in addition to the main domain and subdomains, then you should choose certificates with the Wildcard prefix. Certificates of this type are more expensive, but they make it possible to simultaneously protect all subdomains of the site. If you need to protect several domains for different sites using one certificate, then this is SSL with the Multi Domain prefix. To protect software, there is also a separate type of certificate - this is Code Signing SSL for developers, for the protection of email and documents - Personal Authentication SSL.

Features of paid certificates:

•     the ability to choose the type of protection, method of verification and supplier;
•     monetary compensation in case of information leakage;
•     long term for issuing a certificate - 1 year;
•     the cost of a certificate can start from a few dollars to protect 1 domain and reach several hundred dollars;
•     there were no precedents when browsers marked paid certificates as untrusted;
•     you can register a certificate for both a legal entity and an individual.