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Why Does An SSL Certificate Cost Money?

In order to understand the justification for paying money to procure an SSL certificate, we must know that an SSL certificate serves two most important purposes.

1. An SSL certificate encrypts the data for security
2. It also establishes trustworthiness of your website.

Although it is a fact that there are many sources for getting an SSL certificate for your websites, it is highly recommended not to go for cheap sources. This is because, browsers establish trust between an SSL certificate during ‘SSL handshake’ and if your CA is not trusted by the browser, then your visitor will be displayed a warning sign that security of your website cannot be verified. This will instantly destroy the very purpose of getting an SSL certificate.

Now, coming to the money part of the question, Verification of the website’s identity and owner’s credentials is carried out by Certificate Authority (CA). This organization is entrusted with responsibility to attest digital certificates. The authorities need to maintain employees, offices, and also pay the overheads needed to run the show. The overheads also include cost of auditing since Certificate Authorities have to undergo annual Webtrust audit that entitles the CA to be listed with all browsers as a trusted one.

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SSL certificates build the trust and confidence of a user on a website. The World Wide Web is notorious for its criminal activities and can just wipe you away with its acts. SSL certificates are one of the attempts of making the internet cleaner to do business. There are three main factors that cost money which is being charged for. One is the authentication costs. It involves checking your identity like proving that the domain is yours by verifying your email address, phone number and fax verification of documents. Then there are the expenses involved on running and managing the infrastructure to ensure that the certificate is served correctly. Thirdly, the value of the certificate. The certificate authority (CA) has a document that is meant to get you better page ranking and wider exposure among the end users. There are the expenses on encryption and software and human efforts that also have to be considered. You as a business by buying SSL certificates are guaranteeing the visitors to your website that you can be trusted and the information that they part with is safe and secure. SSL certificate costs are not fixed. The SSL providers vary in the prices and features they offer.