As we all know, now there are many players in the market place trying to sell SSL certs. The question is which one we should buy? The biggest issues have been

browser coverage
speed of issuance
validation
etc...

I want your opinion (SSL providers, please keep your views to yourself, we want geniune hosts to answer) about whether it would be acceptable for an ecommerce website to use SSL certificate that is not trusted by Win98?

if it is YES, I would value your answer as to why
also, if it is NO again your reason would be appreciated.

Thanks

Hosty

It is not win98 that is incompatible - its the root certificate installed in your browser.

Certs from older CA's are generally more compatible.

Thawte and Verisign claim to have the widest coverage - but www.instantssl.com have just teamed up with an older root CA company and claim to have over 99% compatibility now (the same as thawte and verisign) they are just $49 - I use those.

A freind of mine have just used geotrust and he is happy with them too.

Originally posted by mlovick
It is not win98 that is incompatible - its the root certificate installed in your browser.

Certs from older CA's are generally more compatible.

Thawte and Verisign claim to have the widest coverage - but www.instantssl.com have just teamed up with an older root CA company and claim to have over 99% compatibility now (the same as thawte and verisign) they are just $49 - I use those.

A freind of mine have just used geotrust and he is happy with them too.

Thanks for the reply. What I should have said was, win98 base install, ie: when you install win98, who has their roots in there (eg roots that come with win98 or win98se installation). cos what staggered me was the amount of internet users (around 700Million:confused: and even a few percent difference could be a difference between 20M-50M internet users receiving security warning messages. Of course some win98 users will have upgraded their browsers but there must be some out there who hasn't.

I know another host who had problems with an organisation running IE5.00 win98 base install with no upgrade when they used one of the cheaper ssl providers. security warning messages kept coming up and they had go with the 99% coverage ssl provider.

Hosty

Yeh - the win98se is preloaded with IE5.00 and most cheap ssl require 5.01 (or a root cert update).

My opinion is that its OK for taking sensitive information from people other than CC numbers (although technically it is still secure) as you lose the customers trust on the first transaction and you will lose business. Thats why I like the instant ssl as it now has 99% coverage (which equates to IE5.00 and above).