Wildcard SSL certificates now available

Back in May, we posted that we now offer basic SSL certificates for just $19.00 a year, allowing you to protect your Web site without going broke.

Today, we’ve added another option: you can optionally choose a “wildcard” AlphaSSL certificate instead for just $49.00 a year.

A wildcard SSL certificate works for your top level domain name (such as “example.com”) and every other single-level subdomain (including “store.example.com”, “internal.example.com”, “www.example.com”, and so on). The advantage is that you don’t have to choose the specific subdomains in advance.

Wildcard certificates are usually pretty expensive — it’s not uncommon to see them sold for over $200.00 a year — but we’re making them as affordable as possible, because we really think more customers should use SSL security on their sites. Because we’re not making a profit on the certificates themselves, they’re only available to hosting customers on our Gold or Platinum hosting plans.

By contrast, basic certificates only protect versions of your domain name both with and without the leading “www.” subdomain (e.g., “www.example.com” and “example.com”); they are still available for $19.00 if that’s all you need.

Getting a certificate

See our SSL certificate page for full details on SSL certificates. Customers can easily order them through our “My Account” control panel, and they will usually be installed within one business day.