A digital certificate issued for your domain by a Certificate Authority. You buy it, the authority then verifies that the domain — and, for Extended Validation, the organisation — is really yours, and only then is the certificate issued. The verification is the product; the file is what it leaves behind.
It encrypts everything travelling between your visitor’s browser and your site, and it proves the site is yours. That matters most where people log in or type card details — and browsers now mark a site without one as "Not secure" before anybody reads a word of it.
A sum the certificate authority undertakes to pay a visitor who is harmed because the authority mis-issued the certificate. It protects the person trusting your site rather than you, which is why the figure rises with the level of checking — and it is the only thing separating Standard from Premium. It is stated in US dollars by the authority, and is not part of what you pay us.
Yes. These certificates are issued by a recognised Certificate Authority and are compatible with all major browsers. Your visitors install nothing and approve nothing.
No — upgrades and downgrades are not supported. If you need a different certificate you buy the new one and install it on the same server alongside the old one. This is exactly why the section above exists: it is cheaper to choose correctly than to change your mind.
Installing a certificate is not difficult, but it is a series of steps and each of them can fail quietly — a missing intermediate chain is the classic one, because it works in your browser and not in somebody else’s. Ask and we will do it.
The certificates on this page are issued for a twelve-month term, and the price on each card is the price for that year. The renewal price is on the card too.
A Certificate Signing Request is a small file generated on the server the certificate will live on. It carries the public half of a key pair while the private half never leaves the server — which is what makes the certificate meaningful. We can generate it with you.