Compare Shared SSL Hosting

What is Shared SSL Hosting?

Secured Socket Layer (SSL) is a cryptographic protocol that provides communication security over a local computer network or the internet. An SSL certificate is an electronic document used to validate and bind the identity and the ownership of an organization with a cryptographic key, thus enabling secure and trusted communication.

SSL certificates are issued by the Certification Authorities (CAs), who make sure that certificates are issued only to legitimate businesses and websites. Traditionally, SSL certificates are issued for a single domain, but many other options exist when purchasing an SSL certificate.

Most hosting providers offer two very different types of SSL certificates for their customers – private SSL certificates and shared SSL certificates. With inexpensive shared hosting plans, customers usually get a shared SSL certificate for their website.

Shared or Private SSL

A shared SSL certificate points to the hostname of the hosting server and binds to the company name of your hosting provider; it is also shared by all websites hosted on that particular server. Shared SSL may sound like a budget solution, but it’s still sufficient for most users that merely need to secure the administrative part of their websites, such as the control panel.

If your website is geared towards e-commerce, or if it collects sensitive personal data from your visitors for a different reason, using a shared SSL certificate is not recommended. This is because shared SSL certificates point at your hosting provider, not at your company and your website. It breaks the trust of the customers and does not validate your website and company as being unquestionably legitimate. If you use a shared SSL certificate, your domain will not be listed correctly in the address of your e-commerce cart. It will display the hostname of your server instead, and if the customers notice that the URL in the cart has changed, they could potentially see that as a red flag. Ultimately, you will need to get a private SSL certificate to create a serious, trustworthy e-commerce website that will instill confidence.

A private SSL certificate is the more expensive option, but it validates and identifies your business and domain as being legitimate, and gives your customers a greater feeling of security and trust. With a private SSL certificate, your domain will be correctly listed in the address of your e-commerce cart.

Browser warnings with Shared SSL

Using Shared SSL in combination with your domain name will always create browser warning pages. Instead of displaying the requested webpage, Internet Explorer displays a warning similar to “There is a problem with this website’s security certificate”, while Firefox prompts “This connection is untrusted”.

You can see an obvious problem here: Your users probably don’t know much about SSL and underlying technology used on your site, and all they see are browser warnings, telling them your site can’t be trusted!

In order to use the Shared SSL without browser warnings, you must use your hosting provider’s secure server hostname in the URL instead of your domain name, plus your control panel username, similar to:

https://servername.placeholder.com/~cpanel-username/

This way, you will avoid browser warnings, but your control panel username is now exposed and visible.

Why not use Private SSL instead?

Because it’s simply not an option for many people. It costs more, yet many small sites don’t need it. Sure, it would boost security, but in most cases, it would be overkill.

Think of it this way: If you’re building a small hobby site, you don’t need a dedicated server, nor would you stand to gain much from having one. Yes, your site would probably work a bit better, but it wouldn’t make any financial sense.

The same is true of private SSL because a lot of sites simply don’t need it and wouldn’t gain much if they implemented a private SSL certificate. In any case, this is more of a philosophical exercise because small sites are usually hosted on shared servers and come with shared SSL as standard, so private SSL certificates aren’t even a viable option for such sites.

Conclusion

Even though it’s not sufficient for some use-cases, Shared SSL is anything but useless. It does an admirable job of securing the administrative access to your website and it keeps millions of small sites safe.

However, it is simply not meant for public use, e.g. for website visitors.

Keep in mind that Shared SSL certificates are usually only available with shared hosting plans. Many hosting companies include free Shared SSL certificates with their shared hosting plans, while others charge a small fee to activate Shared SSL on their plans.

Private, or dedicated SSL certificates come with a substantially higher fee, but if you’re building an e-commerce site, they are a vastly superior solution, as they can make a huge difference in user confidence. Buyers don’t like security warnings, which is why private SSL is a must in the e-commerce niche (and a few others).