I have two questions about SSL certificates that I'm hoping you guys will share your experience and thoughts on.

Question 1:
How important is it to have your own dedicated SSL certificate vs. using the free shared SSL certificate? Have any of you guys noticed a loss in customers or orders or any negative side effects at all from using the free shared SSL certificate?

Question 2:
What are some good places to buy SSL certificates and what's a fair price? I've contacted Verisign and their prices are beyond my budget.

Thanks.

P.S. My apologies if these questions have been asked and answered before.

From a consumer standpoint, I like it when sites have their own SSL certificates. When I see that I am on a different URL then I expect, I do perform a little research to make sure everything looks right.

Verisign is going to be pretty expensive to buy SSL certificates from. Do a search for Quick/Turbo SSL certificates and you should easily find them very competitively priced.

If you are selling a product having a dedicated SSL certificate is not an option, but a requirement. Having an SSL cert. ensures a higher level of trust when making online purchases. On the other hand a shared cert. is not recommended. Also, you can find very cheap SSL certificates for less than or around $20.00 which is relatively cheap.

Dedicated SSL certificate is required for selling products in order to ensure a higher level of trust while making online purchase.

If you have a huge budget I suggest that you should get a dedicated SSL.

If verisign is to expensive look at comodo. But don't take a very cheap SSL they are mostly not trusted.

Think of a Dedicated SSL Certificate as a cash register in the store. Just about every store you go into, you pay at the cash register before you leave right? How would you feel if when you get to the checkout clerk, they tell you "ok, thanks for your order, now please go accross the street and pay them - we don't have registers here"

That's essentially what a Free SSL Certificate is doing. You're being lumped in with other merchants similar to a flee market and then one central area to checkout.

We deal with eCommerce daily, and SSL Certificates go hand in hand with our operation. Comodo is highly trusted, GeoTrust and GlobalSign are also trusted without an issue. GoDaddy certificates work just as well too. Really, when it comes down to it, the end user generaly just wants to see the little gold lock and not have to deal with any popup saying "this certificate is untrusted, do you want to continue"

There's plenty of cheaper ones out there that are trusted by 99% of all browsers - just be sure you're getting a 256bit SSL Certificate.

Again, MOST SSL certificates will work out there, just be sure that you get a real SSL Certificate and not one of the Shared SSL's. Your conversions will DEFINITELY suffer otherwise.

If you want to be taken serious as a merchant that you should have a Private (Dedicated) SSL installed.

Then if you have the resources and the bucks, go for the green bar a ExtendedSSL . Wow, now thats a top shelf SSL cert for only $759 USD a year.

Actually, check around on that EV SSL stuff MANY hosting companies can now include the EV SSL's with a regular SSL Certifciate for under $100/year. You're no longer locked into those larger invoices

Honestly, you don't need a huge budget. You can get an SSL certificate nowadays for around $10 to $15 per year. The only other cost is most of the time the provider charges for a dedicated IP which you need for the SSL.

I believe that if you need SSL you already have dedicated IP with your host

With the amount of SSL resellers these days, including me, you can get SSLs for WAY cheaper than the actual prices. Look around on HostingDiscussion and you're sure to find one.

This is actually nothing.. SSL created for secure works - like your bank account check securely or SSL 128 Protection. But now people using it - Just for show his clients your are secure here..

P.S. Every body know anyone can brake your ssl within an hr. <No offence>

Can you elaborate on cracking an SSL Encrypted Session within an hour?
128 bit keys would have a possible combination of 339,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

256 bit encryptions are obviously higher.

Where do you have information on breaking the code within an hour?

According to Wikipedia there's currently no amount of traditional computing power that will crack a 128 bit encryption - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_n...nal_complexity

I cant help but say, if you purchase something other than Root Certificate by using 2048 bit RSA keys in a SSL certificate and don't do so through a long standing - reputable company your just waisting money and your time. It wont be worth the email paper you printed your receipt on!

Currently there is a "Trade-In" program that most up to date sellers of SSL cert's know is going on, where you can trade in your old out of touch certificate and move into a more reliable "Root" SSL and also benefit from moving to an unlimited licensing model, this means that a single Certificate could be installed across multiple servers without additional costs to the end customer, maybe you!

Regards!