HTTPS & TLS
SSL costs nothing here. Upgrade only when the site demands it
Host with us and your certificate is issued free, then renewed automatically for as long as you stay. Should you later need subdomain-wide cover or a verified company name, wildcard and EV are there to step up.
$0
cost of a standard certificate
Auto
issuing and renewal, start to finish
256-bit
encryption on every site
$1.5M
warranty on EV certificates
The Case For SSL
What a certificate actually buys you
This is more than compliance paperwork. A certificate guards everything your visitors type and signals, at a glance, that the site is safe to use.
Visitors see the padlock
Browsers reward HTTPS with a padlock in the address bar. Miss it and they flag your pages 'Not secure' — the first thing a visitor reads, before a single word of your content.
Traffic scrambled end to end
Between a visitor's browser and our servers, every login, form entry and card payment moves as ciphertext. Anyone intercepting the connection walks away with noise.
No expiry dates to track
The certificate replaces itself in the background well before it lapses. Nobody wakes up to a dead padlock or a checkout throwing security warnings at customers over a weekend.
Search engines take note
Encrypted pages get preference in ranking. Put two near-identical sites side by side and the one on HTTPS tends to finish ahead of the one without a certificate.
Proof of who you are
Take out EV and your company is vetted first, then the confirmed name is written into the certificate for anyone to inspect. That matters most on pages where customers hand over card details.
Live before you ask for it
Point your domain's DNS at our network and the free certificate is issued and installed on the spot. There is nothing to purchase and nothing to set up.
Included Free
The standard certificate costs you nothing
Shared, WordPress, reseller, VPS, dedicated — whichever plan you pick, a free certificate is part of it. Installation is automatic, cover extends to your domain and every subdomain beneath it, and renewal happens quietly in the background. The padlock goes up once and stays up.
- Domain and subdomains both protected
- Live the moment DNS reaches us
- Replaced automatically before it lapses
- No teaser rate that spikes at renewal
Paid Tiers
The point at which paying makes sense
Some sites do outgrow the free certificate, and that is where paid cover comes in. A wildcard protects an unlimited spread of subdomains from one certificate. EV goes further, embedding your verified company name in the certificate details — a sensible move for online retailers, membership platforms and any page handling sensitive data.
- DV (domain-validated) cover available
- One wildcard for all your subdomains
- EV where you need maximum trust
- Up to $1.5 million in warranty backing
Paying Extra
Most sites have no reason to pay
Encryption strength is identical whether you pay or not, and the included certificate renews on its own. Exactly two situations justify spending money here.
The certificate bundled with your plan renews itself, puts the padlock in front of visitors and runs current TLS. For a typical brochure site or online store that is the complete requirement, and we would rather say so plainly than charge you for something that would change nothing.
There are precisely two gaps. A free certificate will not stretch across unlimited subdomains from a single file — for that you want Wildcard. Nor will it carry an audited company identity with a financial warranty attached — that is Extended Validation, which pays off chiefly when you process payments or logins and want the highest trust signal available.
Want a warranty-backed certificate for one domain, without the wildcard cover? That is still available — send us a request and we'll tell you straight whether it will do anything for your site.
Wildcard SSL Certificate
A single certificate spanning your domain and all its subdomains
$169.99/yr
the price never jumps at renewal · covers every subdomain
- Validation
- Domain (DV)
- Issued
- Usually same day
- Warranty
- $10,000
- Secures
- *.yourdomain
- Every subdomain protected by a single certificate
- Issued to cover *.yourdomain
- The HTTPS padlock shows on every one at once
- Backed by a $10,000 relying-party warranty
- Ideal when your app creates subdomains on the fly
- Installation is handled by our team, free of charge
- Issued the same day in most cases
- 256-bit encryption on a 2048-bit key
- Install it across as many servers as you like
- Reissue it as often as you need
Checkout happens on Hosting Cheap, the billing platform that powers our orders.
EV SSL Certificate
Extended vetting puts your verified company name on the cert
$379.99/yr
the price never jumps at renewal · highest assurance
- Validation
- Extended (EV)
- Issued
- 1–3 days
- Warranty
- $1,500,000
- Secures
- 1 domain
- EV vetting confirms your business is real and registered
- Your verified company name is written into the cert
- The highest level of trust a certificate can offer
- Backed by a $1,500,000 relying-party warranty
- Gives buyers confidence at checkout and sign-in
- We walk you through the whole validation process
- 256-bit encryption on a 2048-bit key
- Trusted by every major browser
- Reissue it as often as you need
- A site seal for your footer
Checkout happens on Hosting Cheap, the billing platform that powers our orders.
Once payment clears, we run the validation and install the certificate ourselves. Wildcard is typically finished within a day; EV takes a few days longer, because the company behind the site has to be verified first.
The Process
Three steps, and only one of them is yours
- 1
Point the DNS at us
The only hands-on part: register the domain in your account and direct its DNS to our platform. Everything after that runs by itself.
- 2
The platform takes over
Once verification clears, our systems order the free certificate and put it live on the domain. No buttons, no uploads, no files to move around.
- 3
It stays current on its own
Each renewal is handled before the old certificate runs out, so HTTPS and the padlock never drop. You will never need a reminder in your diary.
Standard
Everything the certificate covers
- A certificate at no cost on any plan
- Automatic issuing and installation
- Your domain and its subdomains secured
- Renewal handled in the background
- Force-HTTPS redirects if you want them
- TLS 1.3 as standard
- Upgrade paths for DV, wildcard and EV
- Trusted by every mainstream browser
- Straight pricing, no add-on charges
- Real people on support, 24/7
Asked A Lot
Certificates without the jargon
Does every plan genuinely come with SSL?
Yes. A no-cost certificate ships with every hosting plan here. We issue it on your behalf and keep it valid the whole time your site is hosted with us.
Where does a paid certificate beat the free one?
For the vast majority of sites, nowhere — the free certificate encrypts traffic and delivers the padlock, and that is the whole requirement. Paid options bring exactly two extras. A wildcard pulls every subdomain under one certificate. An EV certificate adds an audited check on your company identity, which browsers and buyers both treat as a stronger guarantee.
Do visitors get the padlock icon?
They do, from the moment the certificate goes live — the padlock appears and pages load over HTTPS. Where no valid certificate exists, browsers put a 'Not secure' label in the address bar in its place.
Is renewal something I manage?
Not at all. The free certificate reissues itself in good time, no prompt required. With paid wildcard and EV certificates, we contact you before the validation window opens so your cover carries on unbroken.
Is there a speed cost to HTTPS?
Nothing you would measure in practice. Today's TLS implementations are tuned hard, and HTTPS is the entry ticket for HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 — protocols that usually speed a site up rather than hold it back.
Will a single certificate handle every subdomain?
Your main domain and its subdomains are already covered by the free certificate. Running subdomains at scale? A wildcard rolls all of them into one certificate and keeps the admin down.
Put a padlock on every page you publish.
A self-renewing certificate comes free with any plan, and wildcard or EV cover is ready whenever you need to prove exactly who is behind the site.
Compare Our PlansBrowsers gave up being polite about missing encryption long ago. Every domain here receives a certificate free, installed and renewed with no calendar reminder required. The engine room holds NVMe storage, LiteSpeed caching, our redundant London datacentre and engineers wide awake at three in the morning.
Geared for owners encrypting the data visitors hand over: free SSL on every domain, a free lift from your old host, automatic daily backups, and no gap between the listed price and the invoice.
Free SSL as standard, paid SSL when required
The free certificate spans the domain and its subdomains, installs itself and renews on time. Paid options exist for projects wanting a wildcard across many subdomains, a longer warranty or an organisation-validated seal — issued fast, and installed by us if you would rather skip the job.
Below the surface, every certificate rides the same platform — NVMe drives rather than spinning disks, LiteSpeed rather than a stock web server, and a 99.9% uptime figure baked into the terms.
The cases where a paid certificate earns its keep
Billing should be uneventful: one figure, declared up front, repeated at renewal, with promotions labelled clearly rather than tucked into a footnote. Licences and issued certificates activate the moment they exist, so refunds on those are weighed case by case — any hosting ordered alongside still keeps its full 30-day money-back guarantee.
Basic encryption never appears as an upsell; it is standard on every domain and every plan. Paid certificates carry on-page pricing with their extras spelled out, so judging whether you need one takes a minute.
Issue and renewal, fully automated
Issue and renewal run automatically across the platform, with certificates installed and sites shifted to HTTPS with zero downtime. Renewals fire well ahead of expiry, and a failure alerts our engineers — not just you.
The invisible work — patching, monitoring, swapping hardware, filtering — is included and handled by us. It is most of what your money actually buys.
- Auto-renewed free SSL on every domain
- Wildcard and OV options for projects needing them
- Minute-by-minute monitoring from our network desk
- Redundant network paths and conditioned power
Good to Know
More that's built in
Expiry never ambushes you
Renewals run ahead of schedule and page our engineers on failure. A browser warning should never break the news.
Humans on the line
Engineers cover the queue at every hour, aiming to reply within 2 hours, or 1 hour if the site is offline.
Next year costs the same
Every plan renews at the rate you started on — no second price waiting down the road.
99.9% uptime, under SLA
Our redundant London datacentre, automatic failover and monitoring that alerts an engineer before you spot anything.
A panel that gets out of your way
Controls sit exactly where instinct says they should — which is most of what a decent panel owes you.
Scale up without relocating
When you outgrow a tier, the fix is one click in the panel — not a migration eating your weekend.
Getting Going
Set up in three quick steps
- 1
Line up the tiers
Connect the domain to your account.
- 2
Point your name
The free certificate issues and installs automatically.
- 3
Ship it
Want a wildcard or OV seal? Order it and we handle that install too.
In Every Plan
Bundled in at no extra cost
- 30-day guarantee stays on hosting bought with it
- HTTPS live with no manual installation
- Automatic renewal well ahead of expiry
- Shaped around owners encrypting the data visitors hand over
- Every hosted domain gets SSL free
- Our engineers run your migration at no cost
- Backups taken automatically every day, all plans
- a 99.9% uptime SLA that pays credits when missed
Still Curious
Questions that keep coming up
Does a paid certificate encrypt better than the free one?
No — the encryption is byte-for-byte the same: identical strength, identical browser trust. What paid adds is organisation validation, wildcard subdomain coverage and a warranty, which some businesses need for legal or procurement boxes. Most sites are fine on the free one, and we will say so.
How fast can I get going with SSL certificates?
Immediately. Orders self-provision, and if you would prefer us to handle setup, the support desk is staffed whatever hour you are reading this.
Does the price move at renewal?
Same rate, same amount. There is no introductory price here that silently doubles once you are settled.
What if SSL certificates turns out to be the wrong call?
Licences and issued certificates go live on the spot, so refunds are settled case by case — contact the desk within 7 days and we will find a fair outcome. Any hosting purchased at the same time keeps its full 30-day money-back guarantee either way.
Keep reading
Secure Hosting
Hardened accounts, DDoS screening, daily backups.
Web Hosting
NVMe cPanel hosting from $2.42/mo with SSL and migration in.
Domain Names
Domains from $2.99 with renewal pricing shown up front.
Handpicked from the Resource Library
Installing an SSL Certificate
From issuance to the padlock, redirect step and all.
SSL Certificates, Defined
What the padlock actually proves — and what it never did.
Let's Encrypt or Paid SSL?
Where free covers you completely, and where paying earns its keep.