Are you interested in offering your viewers better safety and wish to enhance your search engine rankings?
How would you feel if you get to know that you can avail all this without spending a single penny!
With SSL certificates you can secure your website connection and augment its search engine ranking in Google, and the great thing is that you can get an SSL certificate absolutely free of cost. So, first I brief you about the various free SSL certificates let me tell you what an SSL certificate actually is!
SSL Certificate Meaning
If you have ever noticed, then some websites begin with HTTP://, while there are other sites that start with HTTPS://.
This difference is because of an SSL certificate.
SSL is an abbreviated name for Secure Sockets Layer that performs the role of establishing an encrypted link between your viewer’s web browser and your web server.
If you have an unsecured HTTP connection, then third-parties can grab any traffic between your web server and your visitor’s browser. This is an imperative subject, especially if you are passing sensitive information, such as credit card details. In fact, for this reason, even Google forces website owners to use secure HTTPS connections for all their traffic.
Why you Require an SSL Certificate?
Earlier, only e-commerce webmasters care about having an SSL certificate, but over the past few years, things transformed when Google forced the use of SSL certification and made it one of the important ranking factors.
The reality is the use of SSL certificates gives a boost in the SERPs. The boost might not be significant, but can be a good one. But in January 2017, Google went further and confirmed that Google would mark HTTP pages that gather passwords or credit card details as non-secure! This implies that if you do not have an HTTPS page then it would be marked as unsafe for the users.
So, if you have an SSL certificate, you are not just imparting safety to your visitors, but you also have a better search engine ranking.
Different Kinds of Free SSL Certificate
If you wish to have a certificate implemented on your site without spending even a penny then here are a few SSL or Certificate Authority House providers to help you.
The limitation of these free certificates is, they come with very few days validity, so we can say these are trial certificates that will give you an idea of the SSL installation process only.
If you would like to obtain an SSL certificate for a long period at an affordable price, then you can choose a company like Cheap SSL Shop.
8 Best Low-Cost and Free SSL Certificate Providers
Let’s Encrypt
It is a collaborative project with the Linux Foundation and novel certificate authority sponsored by Akamai, Cisco, Mozilla, Facebook, SiteGround, and more that provides a free SSL Certificate.
It is an excellent way to save expenditure and implement it in a non-productive scenario. The SSL is automated, and hence, you don’t have to create CSR and send it to the CA authority to get it approved. All this occurs automatically in the background of web servers.
Visit WebsiteCloudflare
Cloud Flare is a Security and CDN Company that can make your website secure and much faster. It powers numerous prestigious sites, like Yelp, StackOverflow, Reddit, Mozilla, and more.
The recent announcement from Cloud Flare confirms the universal SSL in free for all users. So, if you are using the free plan of Cloud Flare and wish to activate the SSL plugin then you can do this in the following steps:
- Login into the Cloud Flare
- Select the site you wish to enable SSL
- Click on the Crypto button
- Set the configuration to ‘flexible’ and status to ‘ACTIVE ‘
Check this Guide for More Info – How to setup Cloudflare flexible SSL Certificate for WordPress
In just a few seconds, you are ready with the SSL security. You can verify it by accessing your site with HTTPS.
Visit WebsiteGoGetSSL
It offers free cost certificate for personal use. To ensure you get the certificate, you are required to validate the domain ownership. This certification is perfect if you have your own personal blog or website.
GoGetSSL is an alternative to letsencrypt and serving its clients since 2009. The company offers multiple types of Cheap SSL certificates to its consumers.
Visit WebsiteComodo
Comodo provides free of cost SSL for complete 90 days. It is a perfect selection if you are looking for secured certification, or alternative to Cloudflare for a short-term project, or if you wish to comprehend how SSL works.
You can get free of cost SSL certification issues in just a couple of minutes with the biggest strength and bit encryption. Almost all major browsers identify Comodo issued certificates.
Visit WebsitecPanel Account
It is one of the hosts that has partnered with Let’s Encrypt to add free SSL certificate right inside their client’s cPanel dashboards.
For instance, if you are hosting at SiteGround, you can install a free SSL certificate in just a few seconds from the cPanel dashboard. All you have to do is find out the Let’s Encrypt button.
After this, you need to select your desired domain and click on the install button.
SSL for Free
If your website host is not supporting Let’s Encrypt, then you may still be able to obtain a free SSL certificate by using a website known as ‘SSL for Free.’
This website would help you configure the Let’s Encrypt certificates, but for this, you will require access to the FTP details of your website and potentially support from your host.
If it is possible for you, then you must try to find out a host that offers direct Let’s Encrypt support as it completely simplifies the process.
WoSign
This is another authority to offer a certificate for 2 years without any expenditure. It supports the SHA2 algorithm.
You can get a free SSL for WordPress issued from the WoSign CA Free SSL Certificate G2.
FreeSSL
While it is not yet publicly available, the FreeSSL is absolutely free of cost certificate project from Symantec. It is an amazing option for startups and Non-profits. Also, you can always sign up to be notified when FreeSSL gets public.
Since Google is forcing SSL, so it is something that cannot be ignored. As of now, Google has confirmed it as an important factor in search engine rankings, but it is predicted that in the future Google might punish sites that don’t bring SSL to use. SSL certificate is available free of cost, so don’t take a chance and get it now.
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9 comments. Leave new
Hey..
Can you please help me out in setting up of SSL? Please let me know the steps or full guide…
Thank you…
Hi Saurabh,
Another great post from you. 🙂
Here I want to ask which on is best free SSL certificate? Means one of my site is on bluehost and it also provide a SSL certificate.
Which one is best – Cloudflare or Bluehost? (For free and log term)
Once again thanks for the awesome post. 🙂
~Swapnil Kharche
Thanks now i am using it now
Hey there,
I read you post but I’m really confused about how to really execute it. Do let me know if you can help.
Good article. Anything that helps improve peoples awareness of security should be applauded.
You can buy domain validated SSL certificates for less than $10 per year.. why would this pose a problem and make people want to wait for LetsEncrypt.. ? which is certainly not ‘easy’ and may also not proliferate quite as fast as everyone first expected. Great for the future with increasing M2M communications, but not prime time just yet.
At this point all traffic should be under https to deter the bulk of the people who understand enough to sniff your traffic.. a determined, skilled malcontent can usually get past all but the most heavily secured traffic/sites.
The reality is that nothing is truly secure these days but you can protect your sites and traffic enough to make it much harder to breach, for a trivial cost.
Google rarely has the interests of anyone other than Google in mind, but I think that encouraging everyone to use https is a fine idea, and they are one of the few companies in a position to enlighten the vast number of people who are otherwise unaware of the need for improved security.
I used SSL from many 3rd party providers, They irritated with various signs while providing Free Trial SSL. And I didn’t get Let’s Encys tooo & then I jumped to Comodo for Free SSL Certificate finally my domain now settled with https
Its good to have these free ssl certificate options. thanks for sharing.
Great job Saurabh Bro, 🙂
Thanks for sharing article on ssl certificate. It is most useful for websites. All the points mentioned in the article is clearly true.
I have a question though. I read somewhere enabling SSL will affect the adsense income? Is it true?
Thanks for all your educational efforts!
Happy Blogging 🙂
Hello Saurabh bro,
Thanks for sharing this awesome list. I was just knowing about 2 of them. Now i have more options to choose from.
Regards,
Gururaj Murthy D