I need to have a valid SSL certificate, by valid I mean not self signed. I don't want my customers to have to deal with the 'exception'.
How much does it cost? I'm bit lost because I checked on Verisign and it costs around ~1000$ while I can find others from 30$.
Any ideas? By the way I'm currently located in France, if that matters.
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Let's Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority made by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG). It is sponsored by well-known organisations such as Mozilla, Cisco or Google Chrome. All modern browsers are compatible and trust Let's Encrypt.
All certificates are free (even wildcard certificates)! For security reasons, the certificates expire pretty fast (after 90 days). For this reason, it is recommended to install an ACME client, which will handle automatic certificate renewal.
There are many clients you can use to install a Let's Encrypt certificate:
Let’s Encrypt uses the ACME protocol to verify that you control a given domain name and to issue you a certificate. To get a Let’s Encrypt certificate, you’ll need to choose a piece of ACME client software to use. - https://letsencrypt.org/docs/client-options/
You are really asking a couple of questions here:
1) Why does the price of SSL certificates vary so much
2) Where can I get good, cheap SSL certificates?
The first question is a good one. For example, the type of SSL certificate you buy is important. Many SSL certificates are domain verified only - that is, the company issuing the certificate only validate that you own the domain. They don't validate your identity, so people visiting your site might know that the domain has a SSL certificate, but that doesn't mean the person behing the website isn't a scammer or phisher, for example. This is why the Verisign solution is much more expensive - you are getting a cert that not only secures your site, but validates the identity of the owner of the site (well, that's the claim).
You can read more on this subject here
For your second question, I can personally recommend RapidSSL. I've bought several certificates from them in the past and they are, well, rapid. However, you should always do your research first. A company based in France might be better for you to deal with as you can get support in your local hours, etc.
Source: Stackoverflow.com