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Ask HN: Best place to buy SSL from?

12 points by state ↗ HN
It has been a while since I have bought an SSL cert. I used to use Comodo. They're alright, but nothing special.

Is there an SSL provider that people actually like?

17 comments

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joshstrange
sslmate is the one I'd suggest. They are cheap, easy to use, developer friendly, and no BS. https://sslmate.com/
jdoss
I highly recommend SSLMate too. Buying a SSL cert via CLI and automatic SSL renewal and updates via cronjob make it awesome.

Not to mention it has configuration templates that make getting a best practice config for almost everything you would use a SSL cert on. https://sslmate.com/blog/post/sslmate_mkconfig

kaolinite
Another vote for SSLMate. Used them recently and was stunned at how great they are. Definitely an SSL company for developers/sysadmins (in a good way).
sfunk1x
I use and have suggested https://www.startssl.com/ to several folks, who have all had good experiences. You do need to watch out for their login process, as it's certificate-based. Lose your login cert and you're in trouble. Tradeoff is cost.
edgan
My issue with them is their client ssl certificate is cumbersome, and at least their free service is regularly down for "maintenance"
staunch
Namecheap sells "Comodo PostiveSSL" certs for $9/year.
akg_67
I second Namecheap. I use the same SSL certificate for my web service. I used to use free cert from startSSL but they declined to renew the free one and the cost was too high so I switched to Namecheap.
edgan
I personally use ssls.com. It is slightly cheaper than namecheap.com for multiple year, and it is actually namecheap.com by another name.

On a side note, I would only buy one year certificates at this point, because Lets Encrypt is about to make them free.

nailer
Hi Galen,

If you use Stripe, Twitter, npm, or your bank, you'll see the company name in a green bar. That's an EV certificate and is the only way for a website to prove a company's identity.

EV certs are great, particularly if you're selling something or people are logging into your site.

Since they involve a bunch of verification, the industry standard time get the certificate is normally about 7-21 days.

https://certsimple.com, my company, live checks data while you enter to do EV in an average of 5 hours. It takes 80 seconds to apply, including making the CSR - no Q and A in a terminal, no installing anything, just cut and paste.

Because of this, we're faster at EV than everyone else.

We also give 5% of our revenue to groups that make strong crypto happen - we cut our first cheque to OpenBSD Foundation last Friday. We also publish a bunch of interesting research around performance and security at http://certsimple.com, including OSS code to recreate our results.

Hope that helps! Email me any time at mike@certsimple.com if you have questions.

Mike

PS. if you don't need EV, we recommend you get a free certificate from http://letsencrypt.org which should be launching soon.

tfangel
Digicert all the way. Clean, painless and their support is top notch. Compare EV cost VS that of Comodo..
Aeji
Ssls.com or cheapsslsecurity.com
kennpeterson
Comodo is cheapest CA now and provide highest web security. 256 bit encryption, unlimited reissue, unlimited server license and best support. Try https://comodosslstore.com/ to find best ssl deals.
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