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Ask HN: What's the Catch - CheapSSLs looks like the real deal. Really?

7 points by ghshephard ↗ HN
Every time you need to roll out a new SSL secured web server, it's always a game of "Search for the right combination of Brand Trust and Price and Compatibility and Speed" - http://www.cheapssls.com/index.php?dispatch=compare.all looks like they resell pretty much everything we want, at a price that you get to chose. But, my Radar goes up when something looks too good to be true - so, does anybody know what the catch is? The abundancy of cheap stock photography instantly makes me think "Scam!" - and the site itself feels slightly "off" - anybody use them?

7 comments

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ghshephard
They compare all of their certs here: http://www.cheapssls.com/index.php?dispatch=compare.type

Comodo, Geotrust, and Verisign. I'm still curious as to what the catch is.

[Edit: Okay - interesting. They provide "Low Assurance" Certs for cheap, and only Verify that you have control over the Domain. This is the first time I've ever been aware that Certs do anything BUT verify you own the domain. I"m guessing less than 0.1% of people verify more than that using their browser, so, in effect, it's the only purpose of a Cert]

shiftpgdn
Just about nobody(on the customer end) does anything with SSL certificates. We had to switch from an EV SSL to a domain validated certificate for a few weeks while our new EV was validated and it had absolutely 0 affect on orders.
jaylynch
We use them at my day job, their support can be a bit clunky in terms of turnaround times once you've escalated something tricky but they're generally quite helpful and certainly legit - we have a mix of EV and regular with I think 1 wildcard and have never had any particularly serious issues other than slow EV paperwork.
DonPellegrino
I bought a certificate from them a few weeks ago, it was delivered to my email in just a few minutes. No problems whatsoever.
ishbits
What about SmartSSL. Free.
ianpeterson
I don't about them but i bought mine from RapidSSLonline.com a Platinum Certificate Authority of Leading SSL brands such as GeoTrust, Thawte, Symantec, and RapidSSL. They offer me Free SSL certificate for one moth trial and after trial period i bought my SSL certificate for as low as price with heavy discounted coupon code from them. Try them!