Nowadays, every company offers their product in diverse packages. They can have a personal plan, business or enterprise. At first thought, you might be tempted to buy the personal packaging. Hey! It´s quite understandable! Who doesn´t want to save some money, when it comes to buying a product or services? But let´s be honest, in some cases going for the cheapest option doesn´t necessarily mean saving money as you may not be getting what you are looking for and at the end you have to pay more – ever experience this situation on your personal life?
But how to decide which type of certificate is better suited for your company or personal use? Before even taking a grasp at each of the SSL certificates is important to have a clear idea of your purpose of usage on the SSL certificate for your website and business.
- Get to know your product and business.
It might seem like an unforgettable step, but some companies’ don´t have their goals in mind when buying a product or certificate. They aim for more or less, and that´s why it´s so important to a list of the needs of your company right by your side when buying a certificate – example if you looking to boost your visitors confidence and have more conversion, the Extended Validation (EV) SSL Security certificate will be the options you are looking for and not the Domain Validated SSL Security Certificate.
Other points to consider include the amount of clients you are serving and the amount that you expect it to grow, try to keep your calculations realistic in order to get better results. If you are just starting your business it might be better to start small in order to make sure that you are purchasing the right certificate for you. If it’s for personal or content website, an entry level of SSL certificate would have suffice.
- See the benefits of purchasing each certificate.
Yes, each certificate has it owns benefits. Especially if you know how to take advantage of them. We are not talking you out of buying the certificate that you consider the best for your company, we just encourage you to buy the one that you need. If you take the personal certificate you might not be getting all the advantages of the business one, but you will be receiving what you need at the moment. In this case, you will benefit by note paying for extras that you won´t be using right now.
- What will be your budget?
Different type of SSL Security certificate have a different cost. An EV SSL Security Certificate which is the most popular among the certificate is the most expensive compare to Domain Validated and Business Validated SSL Certificate. EV has been charged with the highest price among the rest of certificate as there’s a higher sum of warranty the certificate is providing when there’s a breach happened, the amount of work it involves by the Certificate Authority (CA) to review (which required manual) and validate the certificate request.
- Speed of issuance of the SSL Certificate.
If you are looking in the speed to receive the SSL certificate, domain validated has the fastest speed of issuance – usually within 10-15 minutes after you have completed the submission of the CSR key on your order. The fast issuance is due to the process only involved a simple email approval by the domain owner based on the domain whois record. Organization / business type of SSL will takes about 1-3 days as it required certain docs related to the business to be submitted to the CA while Extensive Validated SSL (as the same said ‘extensive’), a thorough validation include a professional opinion letter by a lawyer may be required before the CA will issue the final green address bar EV certificate – usually the entire process takes 10-14 days depends on the speed of submission of the document.
- Do you need multiple years of Certificates?
Typical purchase of the SSL security certificate will be for 1 year. While Domain Validated SSL allow you to purchase / renew for multiple years, EV SSL only allow the max of 2 years (include new/renewal purchase).
Buying or renewing for multiple years also saves you the hassle of going through the process of generating the CSR and submission of the certificate – especially you are getting any of the Business Validated / Extended Validated (EV) SSL as each renewal will of the certificate, the CA will go through the same process to ensure the business information still remain intact.
Multi years of SSL purchase/renewal also give you a much more savings compare to buying for 1 year. It really drill down on how your personal / business usage will be.
p/s: What’s your experience of buying a SSL certificate on the past? Share with us on your thought.
