Get And Install SSL Certificates

Please note: SSL is required on your server ONLY if you need to work with Facebook, Google+, Instagram or Twitter.

Three points:

• The most web hosting services have SSL included by default. Or you can easily add it via Hosting panel.
• If not there is no problem to get free certificate. For example you can try StartSSL.
• We recommend to follow steps below to get fast and secure SSL support.

Thanks to Chris Palmer for this guide! Prices listed below may change over time.

If you don’t already have certificates for your site’s hostname(s), go to  SSLMate and buy some. You have 2 options:

• Standard: $16/year, valid for example.com and www.example.com.
• Wildcard: $150/year. valid for example.com and *.example.com.

Obviously, Wildcard is economical when you have more than 9 subdomains; otherwise, you can just buy 1 or more Standard certificates.

Note

I mention SSLMate because it automates aspects of certificate purchase and provisioning that people have historically found confusing, and because the price is low. Another low-cost certificate vendor is  SSLs.

In the near future, you won’t have to pay any money at all, thanks to the  Let’s Encrypt project. I don’t intend to endorse particular certificate vendors, only to show that getting certificates can be easy and low in cost.

Last step

Copy the certificates to all your front-end servers in a reasonable place such as /etc/ssl/private(Linux and Unix) or wherever IIS wants them (Windows).