What is a SSL certificate? Do I need it?

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What is a SSL Certificate?

Today, Internet is not a very safe place. Information which is transmitted through it can be sometimes read by other people. There are many ways that malicious people (known as crackers) can learn the information visitors are exchanging with your website, and obtain sensitive information (for example, passwords or credit card numbers). It could also be possible that they presented to unaware customers a modified version of your website hosted on their server, in order to collect some important information from them.

In order to fight this, a special Internet protocol called SSL was created (when speaking of viewing Web pages over SSL, often the term HTTPS is used). It uses cryptographic encryption of the data sent to and from your website, so that no-one can decrypt and understand it except your server software. This way your customers' data can be safe, and the visitors themselves can feel secure because they know that their information is transmitted over the Internet securely.

In order to use HTTPS, you need to have a SSL certificate. It's a special data which identifies your server, and tells Internet browsers how to encrypt the data sent to it. By using a SSL certificate, you ensure your customers that:

They are downloading data from your site and not any other site, because an SSL certificate is only valid with your site's domain.
Information that they send overt the Internet is secure, because only your server knows how to decode it.

You should use HTTPS if you want to collect sensitive data on your website, such as credit card data or social security numbers. Then you need to obtain a SSL certificate, because it is required to use the encryption. Some hosting providers give SSL certificates with their hosting plans, and others require you to buy it separately. SSL certificate costs usually $100-$200 per year when bought separately.

For more help, check out our Hosting Forum