SSL Certificates

[VectraMan]

I need to get one for a website shop, that's going to be a enter credit card details type deal. I know there's the likes of Verisign and Thawte that do all this, but they seem to want $600. A quick Google reveals these people:

http://www.eukhost.com/ssl-certificates.php

who do a basic certificate for £39 per year, but with more advanced options for a little more.

I'm confused. What's the difference between these options in practice? Will users be warned the site isn't secure if it only has one of the cheaper certifcates and so it'll put them off? And do the more expensive (and presumably more secure) certifcates only work with the latest greatest browsers and that's also likely to put other people off?

Obviously the last thing I want to do is give customers an excuse not to buy.

[Cliphead]

ClientCo use GoDaddy standard SSL certs at $30 per year and no issues at all.

[AtW]

I use EUKHOST also (not for long since we are about to deploy our own servers), but we got SSL from http://www.rapidssl.com - watch out when you get SSL certificate, some providers allow it to be set to www.domain.com AND domain.com - this is important because usually certificates are just for single host name, meaning if you get it for www.domain.com then customers who go to https://domain.com will get warning that your site might be dodgy!

[Spacecadet]

How secure do you need the site to be?
Verisign and Thawte are supposed to be the most secure but not only are they expensive but you have to jump through a few hoops to get them.
The other options are more automated and usually involve a phone call to the number you provide to authenticate your voice and contact details and an email to admin@<hostname_you_want_to_secure>

I had to get a whole bunch of SSL certs a few years ago and I think I got them from Geotrust. Took less than a day to sort them out and at the time they were about £50 each

[AtW]

All modern SSL is secure enough - 128 bits or 256 bits won't make much difference (though it may matter for PCI compliance).

[VectraMan]

How secure do you need the site to be?

Well as I said the only worry is that people might be put off spending money by the site not having the right level of security. But it doesn't sound like it's worth worrying about and the cheap ones will be fine. Thanks.

[AtW]

Don't go too cheap - certificate should be supported by most browsers and some of the newer SSL sellers are just too new so their root certificates won't be in some of the older browsers.