Hi all,

I didn't know what forum to post it in to I'm going to post it here.

I just went to my RaQs control panel and auto generated an SSL certificate and it is now working when I do https://, however it gives a message each time that the SSL certificate is not trusted. What I'm wondering is, Do I need to pay for a certificate to get a trusted one? If so where can I find the best price for that? Also does it matter what company I get it from?


Thank you,
Saeed

Do I need to pay for a certificate to get a trusted one?

Yes. You need to purchase a certificate that has been signed by one of the major Certificate Authorities (CAs). These include Verisign (http://www.verisign.com/products/site/index.html), Thawte (http://www.thawte.com/getinfo/products/secure.html), and Equifax (http://www.equifaxsecure.com/digitalcertificates/dc_webservcert.html).

The cheapest I saw listed currently is $99 for an Equifax cert.

I had some problems using an Equifax cert a year ago when they first introduced their CA service. Apparently some browsers don't like chained CAs, which Equifax was using at the time. I don't know if this has been cleared up yet or not. Perhaps someone else can say something about that. We have been using it successfully for the past year, however, with no problems after the initial installation.

Any of the links above contain a lot of information about the process involved in gettting a cert.

compsci

compsci,
thank you for your response. If anyone else has some additional info please feel free to share it with us.

Older browsers have a problem with equifax, go with thawte or verisign, their both the same company but thawtes certs are cheaper and work everywhere, if your planning on having alot of customer using ssl you should get a * certificate that way you want have to buy a new cert for each customer a * cert allows you to create subdomains using the same cert, IE Https://bob.mystarcert.com and Https://bill.mystarcert.com

I'm a Thawte fan as well. After your first one you can sign up for their hosting partner program, then anything after that will only cost $100. Equifax are just as good now, but I have a pet peeve for their secure site logo - it looks nasty and doesn't instill confidence in my eyes.

Verisign is just handing someone your wallet and saying take what you want... $300+ is just too much

Greg Moore