Does anyone know a good company to purchase SSL certificates. I am new to this and I need to get one since I am gonna start accepting credit card payments.

You can always get them FREE from

http://www.cacert.org

I know this may be a little off topic, but is there anything "special" about one SSL certificate from the next? Don't they all just encode data? I am talking about the differences in prices for 128-bit SSL certificates.

basically yes. Many of the companies offer value added services to make the increase in price justifiable.

I did a little research and found that companies offer a varying amount of monetary protection with their SSL certificates. Does this mean that their SSL cert. is better than any other company's? Or does it simply mean that they are willing to take more of a risk to get a customer?

I've had no problems with the QuickSSL from ev1: http://www.ev1servers.net/english/quickssldetails.asp

Along with extra features such as insurance, SSL certificates can vary in their browser coverage (eg more expensive one's may also support really old browsers).

I don't know if it's still up to date but this may be of some use: http://www.whichssl.com/ssl-certificate-comparison.html

Godaddy has ones which are good too.

I would have one problem with GoDaddy providing my SSL cert. They are a hosting company and if you choose their "Turbo SSL Certificate" and display their seal, it advertises them. If I wanted the perfect SSL cert., I'd get mine from VeriSign--the problem is: they're way too expensive.

Geotrust has worked great for us. The products range from low end (plain ol' cert) to high end (seal w/business profile). We have used all 3 versions of the Quick SSL line, and they work great!

Hi,
We use geotrust certificates mainly because they are fast to get, and lower cost than verisign and thawt.
The one person said something about..
are they different,, don't they all just encrypt the data...

That is a bit of what the certificate companies want you to think.

Actually, they don't encrypt anything.
All they do is say that your servers security program dose encrypt the data as it should.
They force us to buy them, and tell people that a secure server is really secure. It is a racket, and a high dollar one at that.

Your web server is what makes the pages secure. The certificates only tell the browser that you have bought a certificate, and "that" company says your OK....

There may have been a day when there was more meaning to it than that, but that would have been way way back in the 80's or before, when the internet was in its infancy.

My guess,,, someone decided they wanted to make some money. Decided to pay IE and Netscape a percentage if they agreed, and hence the certificate was born, along with the root files that list the certificate selling companies. :-)
Back in the day,, mozilla didn't care - if it was secure, it showed it was secure.

So, with this racket in mind, I don't mind paying less and getting my certs faster. I have thought about looking into lower cost certificates simply because geotrust kept raising their prices to what thawt charged before verrisign bought them out. but you gotta love the fact that you can request a cert and have it installed in less than 30 minutes!

Having to buy secure server certificates is a raket, but it probably keeps more people from using bad ssl programs on their servers. I guess in todays world it has become a needed thing.

Tim L

Comodo get my vote, 10 out of 10 times.

Simon

Free? You need security... and sometimes security is not free.