Hi there Michael,

It depends on what kind of business you have when you talk about SSl certificate.
there are the usual domain-validated one's and the higher one which is the High Assurance certificate where you have to prove that your org is legitimate.

If your budget is low, you can go for the cheap SSL's like the 1's at godaddy and name.com . check out this link www . sslshopper . com/ cheapest-ssl-certificates . html

I usually prefer verisign and geotrust , the good one's.

Talking about the number of domains , these certificates are usually for a single domain but do have a look at
www . whichssl . com / mdc . html - It should help you out.

Regarding installing of these certificates,
The SSL certificate itself is a text file; it is encrypted data that your web server will be able to understand when installed as a digital certificate.
check this link out for further details.
www . digicert . com/ssl-certificate-installation . htm .

If you need further help in installing these certificates, contact me.

Also check out these sites , they might be of help.
www . sslengine . com
www . rapidssl . com

Regards,
PDJSolutions

The free certificates at most web hosting companies are shared. They accomplish this by mapping a folder on your site to a server that contains their own certificate. To use this, you place content into the shared folder, then use a domain name provided by the host company to access the pages or whatever else is loaded into the shared folder.

Be aware that this involves 2 different web spaces at the hosting company. If you are using Windows hosting, then things like global.asa will have to be implement on the main and shared folder. You will also have 2 separate session objects to deal with. Think of it as 2 separate machines because the setup behaves that way.

If you want to use your own domain name for the SSL content instead of the shared one, you will have to purchase a certificate from one of many issuers on the 'net. If you have an account with someone like GoDaddy for registering domain names, they might also sell certificates.

You would contact your host provider and make a certificate request. They respond with a specially formatted text file. This file is then used by the certificate issuer to generate the actual SSL certificate. When you receive the certificate file back from the issuer, send it to the hosting company and they will install it for you on your domain.

You can purchase wildcard certificates to cover multiple domains, but they are expensive. And not all certificate issuers will provide them.

rapidssl is reliable (backed by GEOtrust) and they have a cheap one for like $50/year (or something like that) They also give you 30 days free to get it installed, etc.

You'll need one SSL per domain/IP (static IP required for SSL on a domain)



I've not used Hostgator, but most companies offer a panel where you can request a server signature to supply to the SSL company who will in turn give you your cert back to install on the server... usually fairly painless, but can take a day or two if emails/phone calls for verification cross paths...

I use HostGator. When you buy the Business level account you get one free SSL for your root domain included. You can very easily set it up in your control panel and then you'll have the https:// to put in front of your domain.

It's working very well for me. Of course there is not extra badge to put on your web pages like some of the other services will give you, but you can find nice images that just remind your customer that you're using 128 bit encryption and they'll see the padlock in their browser.

Hostgator does not require you to have your content in two separate folders (unless they are doing it behind the scenes somehow). I don't know if their certificate is inferior to one you can buy and install on your domain.

You can try their's first and if it is not satisfactory, they are also very good at helping you install a 3rd party certificate as well so you really cannot lose with them.