How To – Understanding the Management of SSL Certificates for Credit Card Processing

Filed under: Site Management —

Normally you have 2 options with shared hosting plans

You can have the shared certificate from your hosting company that is free but the url is different than your domain

then you can have your own SSL certificate installed if your hosting company allows it.

To have a SSL Cert installed you will need to purchase it from your hosting company who is a reseller of a SSL Cert Provider or you may be able to purchase it on your own.

The cheaper solution of buying the SSL on your own does not mean you can install it yourself. You will normally need to pay an install fee to your hosting company and when your SSL Certificate comes up for renewal in a Year you will need to pay a Re-Install fee on top of your SSL Certificate Cost.

Additionally you will need a dedicated IP address for your SSL Certificate which they will charge you monthly.

so every year you need to pay
SSL Certificate
Dedicated IP address
SSL Certificate Install Fee

If you are making a good amount of money from the store it is no problem to cover the costs however you still have to go through the renewal process.

Some Hosting Companies offer a Free SSL Certificate and IP address with a higher level Business Account..

In this situation you purchase the Business Hosting account and then sign up for the SSL Certificate which normally will only protect one domain. Meaning it will not protect subdomains or your other websites that may be hosted in the same account.

For that reason you should have your store located at
www.yoursite.com/store
and not
store.yoursite.com

that way you can use the SSL Certificate to protect your entire website
www.yoursite.com/store
www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/wp-login.php
www.yoursite.com/form
www.yoursite.com/classifieds

The Drawbacks of SSL

If your hosting company provides SSL it will be much more difficult to jump ship and move to another hosting company. You will need to go through the entire process again which can take days.

For that reason PayPal and services such as they offer are a good solution for the small website shop. In addition to securing your payments a third party provider never exposes you the shop owner to the customer’s credit card.

That means you do not need to go through certification of your website to accept payments and you reduce your liability to your customer because you never collect any personal information that can be used by a thief to complete payments.