HTTPS security —
for every site you run.

An SSL certificate is a digital certificate that encrypts the communication between a website and its visitors. This prevents sensitive information — credit card numbers, passwords, personal details — from being read by third parties. With an SSL certificate installed, your URL changes from http:// to https:// and a padlock icon appears in the browser address bar.

• Trust: SSL shows users your site is trustworthy — especially critical for e-commerce.
• SEO: Google considers HTTPS sites more secure and ranks them higher.
• Data security: Sensitive info is encrypted in transit.
• Compliance: Required by law in several industries (PCI-compatible, HIPAA, GDPR).

• Domain Validation (DV): The simplest and most economical — verifies only domain ownership.
• Organization Validation (OV): Verifies both domain ownership and the organization behind it.
• Extended Validation (EV): The most trusted — extensive validation of the legal entity, displays company name in browsers.

SSL certificates are typically valid for 1 year (industry standard since 2020). Renew before expiry to avoid downtime — we send reminders 30, 7 and 1 day before. Multi-year purchase still requires annual reissuance per CA/B Forum rules.

Both encrypt traffic identically — same crypto, same browser compatibility. The differences: paid certificates include a warranty (up to $1.5M), OV/EV validation with your company name in certificate details, longer validity, dedicated support and warranty insurance if issuance fails. Free certs (Let's Encrypt) are excellent for personal sites and are bundled with all our hosting plans.

A Wildcard SSL covers your main domain plus all subdomains — *.yourdomain.com. So with one cert: app.yourdomain.com, api.yourdomain.com, staging.yourdomain.com are all secured. Doesn't cover second-level wildcards like *.sub.yourdomain.com.

DV certs are issued in minutes after domain verification (email or DNS record). OV certs typically 1–2 business days after document review. EV certs vary — usually 2–7 business days while the CA verifies your legal entity. Once issued, we install for free on any Hostiger web hosting plan.

Yes. SSL certificates are portable — you can install them on any server, anywhere. Hostiger generates the CSR for you, but the resulting .crt + .key files work on Apache, Nginx, IIS, LiteSpeed and any other modern web server.

The warranty is insurance from the certificate authority — if their issuance process fails (e.g. they wrongly issue a cert to a fraudster who then steals from your customers), they pay out up to the warranty amount. In practice payouts are rare, but higher warranties signal that the CA stands behind their validation process.

Yes — unlimited reissues during the validity period at no extra cost. You'd typically reissue if you lose the private key, change servers or update the certificate's hostnames. Revocation is also supported if your key is compromised.