Getting a better price for SSL
Secure certificates, also known as SSL, are a strange thing to buy. Prices range from thousands of dollars to $20. What’s the difference between them that would account for this massive price range? Insurance. Expensive SSLs will cover much larger fraud claims than the cheap ones. But if you want a better price on SSLs with lots of insurance, here’s a tip: wait until the expiration date approaches, they will continually knock down the price in order to keep your business. It’s happened for several of my clients using Thawte certificates.
Comments
Actually, SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, a cryptographic protocol that provides secure data transfer over the Internet. Certificates are just a piece of data that ensures you are who you say you are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Sockets_Layer
And, why are they a strange thing to buy? It’s the only way people know their data is safe. Certificate authorities like Thawte verify your identity to make sure you are legit. It’s like getting your identity notarized. Are you more likely to trust a claim that your credit card is safe from a neutral third party, or straight from the person who runs the web site?
Not strange because SSLs don’t make sense, but the buying process itself is strange.