Using free SSL is the ultimate choice to give protection to a website. This decision is often taken by website owners who have limited budget for their websites. It is probably because the website is still small and still developing. Using free SSL means that they do not have to pay for anything in order to get the certificate.
Free SSL Safety and Limitations
Free stuff is not always good and safe. Free SSL is thought to be that way, too. However, is it true? Well, it heavily depends on the SSL certificate itself. When you are lucky enough to get your hand on free SSL certificate developed by professional companies, the certificate is probably safe and secured. Find out more information about it down below.
- The Safety Feature of Free SSL
The safety feature of free SSL is usually located on its data requirement. You do not want to leak out your entire personal data on a free SSL. However, in general free SSL is quite safe to use. As long as the certificate is proven to be legitimate and not a form of spam, you can enjoy the benefits of using SSL with no cost at all, but of course the features are going to be very limited.
- The Limitations of Free SSL
Talking about the limitations of free SSL, there are quite a lot of things that a paid SSL can do and the free one cannot. After all, it is always understandable that the paying one is going to be more advanced and beneficial than the free one. Some of the biggest limitations of free SSL can be seen below.
- Cannot Secure Credit Card and Payment
Even when the Secure Sockets Layers certificate that you gain for free is safe to use, most of them cannot secure credit card and payment. Securing real money and transactions needs more advanced feature and usually the free version does not have one. That is why free SSL is not suitable to be used in an e-commerce website or any website with frequent money transactions.
- Validate the Domain Only
When you get the paid SSL, the padlock icon will keep appearing on the address bar all the time. It does not happen with the free SSL. The free SSL gives you safety and allow the padlock to appear on the main domain (landing page). However, it may disappear on the later pages.
- Limited Period of Time
Most of free SSL certificate
lasts for 90 days only. You will have to extend the protection by getting or
upgrading the shield to the paid version or you will have to get a new free one
from somewhere else. This can be inconvenient, especially when the website is
visited by a lot of people per day.
In conclusion, SSL certificate that can be gained for free is still safe to
use. However, there are quite a lot of limitations that they have. If you do
not want to get bothered by the limited features, do not use the free one. You
can get the paid version of SSL instead.