SSL Certificate for website

[Sasquatch]

Our website designer/host is telling me that our website should have a SSL certificate.

Does it need one or are they dreaming up a reason to charge me more fees?

Our website is simply a shop window for our company experience. Not something that needs to rank on google searches as all of our work is via recommendation or repeat business. If we have a new enquiry I can point the potential client to the website (or they can search for it via our business name). Our business name is pretty unique so it is top of the page in any case if searched for.

[DTMark]

A number of years ago Google changed their ranking algorithm. All other things being equal: if you have two sites which would rank around the same position, the one with the SSL certificate (meaning the website will load with an https prefix) will rank higher.

Then, a little later, some browsers decided to start displaying a warning if the website does not have an SSL certificate which may discourage customers from entering information or shopping at that site.

It's all a bit daft since customers have been led to believe that the https prefix is very significant and that their data will not be secure if it isn't present whereas in reality the SSL certificate is a relatively minor safeguard among the myriad things that can cause security and data breaches.

But for all these reasons, your website should have an SSL certificate and your designer is right.

[eek]

You do need a SSL certificate now because browsers expect it.

That doesn't mean it should cost anything as letsencrypt offer them for free and most hosting companies now have automated systems to keep their certificates up to date. 

[Sasquatch]

Thanks chaps. Ranking is irrelevant for us but I do understand the warning displays when sometimes visiting  websites.

Therefore we will 'upgrade' but I'll be pretty grumpy if they try to charge us a lot for the privilege.

[Harley]

Sounds like a metaphor for the covid vaccine!

[spunko]

Your DNS provider may do one, for example Cloudflare do them for free. Letsencrypt is also free but has a bit of a learning curve if you're not familiar with issuing keys.

As a conspiraloon I prefer to hide in plain sight using a Cloudflare one. Most providers like LetsEncrypt ask for your address and details to issue it, Cloudflare don't. When I checked the other domains issued a Cloudflare certificate once, there were ~20k results or something.

[Sasquatch]

4 hours ago, spunko said:

Your DNS provider may do one, for example Cloudflare do them for free. Letsencrypt is also free but has a bit of a learning curve if you're not familiar with issuing keys.

As a conspiraloon I prefer to hide in plain sight using a Cloudflare one. Most providers like LetsEncrypt ask for your address and details to issue it, Cloudflare don't. When I checked the other domains issued a Cloudflare certificate once, there were ~20k results or something.

  I'm not familiar with anything on the IT side of things. I can turn my computer on and off and the rest of the time I just shout at anything electronic if it isn't doing the thing I want it to. Occasionally I resort to violence. There is a deceased Dymo label printer in landfill that would attest to that.