SSL Certificates

SSL certificates are needed if you want to host a secure (HTTPS) website. Customers of our hosting accounts can use a free, domain-validated SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt. This can be enabled using the customer control panel.

We can also provide a number of different types of commercial certificates:

Domain Validated

A Domain Validated SSL certificate is the simplest option, with the most rapid turnaround. These certificates authenticate a single server, for example www.yourdomain.com, which also covers yourdomain.com.

Extended Validation

An Extended Validation certificate produces the "Green Bar" in modern web browsers, indicating that the Certification Authority has followed a specific set of identity verification criteria. These criteria require extensive verification of your company's identity by the CA before the certificate is issued, and are intended, via the "green bar" indicator, to give users added confidence that they are dealing with a legitimate company. Like the Domain Validated certificate, they authenticate a single server.

Wildcard

If you have many servers that require certificates, a Wildcard certificate may be more cost-effective. This certificate validates as many servers within your domain as you want, with the proviso that the * represents only one level of domain name, so a wildcard certificate for *.yourdomain.com works for foobar.yourdomain.com but not foo.bar.yourdomain.com.

Certificate Prices

Certificates are priced per year.

Prices are quoted exclusive of VAT.

To order a certificate, please email us. Other options, including multi-year discounts, are also available on request.

Hosting

We offer two types of SSL certificate hosting: our standard HTTPS service (which is free for Let's Encrypt certificates and certificates purchased from us), our IP-based HTTPS service (£30 per year). The standard service (which uses SNI) works well with all modern browsers, but is not compatible with certain older platforms, most notably the now discontinued and unsupported Windows XP.