Buying Guide
DV vs OV vs EV SSL Certificates — the short version, up front
A direct answer for organisations deciding how far their certificate needs to go in proving who they are: how to weigh the field, what to rule out early, and the setup we would take ourselves.
The short answer
Straight to it: DV for the everyday site, OV where partners genuinely inspect certificates, and EV where written policy or a high-value payment flow calls for the deepest audit, with all three available here.
The working sits below: the checks, the reasoning and the trap — written for organisations deciding how far their certificate needs to go in proving who they are, without the affiliate league-table theatre this topic usually attracts.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
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Most writing on this subject is a league table funded by referral fees. We do it differently: name the buyer (organisations deciding how far their certificate needs to go in proving who they are), name the checks, name the trap, and make a recommendation we will defend in the open.
Begin from one fact about this market and the rest falls in behind it: retiring the green EV indicator flattened the visible difference between tiers to nothing. All that still divides them is the organisational data held in the certificate file and the warranty sum written into the contract behind it.
The short list of checks that matter
Set the feature-grid filler aside and only a few checks genuinely move this decision:
What each tier proves, whether control of a domain, a registered company behind it, or a full extended audit.
Where the difference shows at all, which is buried in the certificate details and never in the address bar now.
The paperwork and lead time each tier adds, set against your launch date.
The warranty figure attached, and who could realistically ever claim against it.
The mistake this market is built on
Buying EV to bring the green company name back to the address bar, when Chrome, Firefox and Safari removed that indicator years ago and none of them plan to restore it.
Once it has been named you see it everywhere in this market — and steering around it does more for you than optimising any other figure on the page.
The verdict, unhedged
DV for the everyday site, OV where partners genuinely inspect certificates, and EV where written policy or a high-value payment flow calls for the deepest audit, with all three available here.
In concrete terms that is our EV SSL option: one flat rate carrying the essentials (SSL, migration, copies, mail) this market prefers to bill separately, with in-place upgrades ready when the work picks up.
NVMe storage and LiteSpeed caching sit under every tier, the smallest plan included — that is the floor here, not an upgrade.
Check every word of this yourself
Put us through the same checks: write to support before paying and see who answers, compare the renewal rate with the order rate, read the refund terms in full, and look the company up — ours is UK Health Care Support Ltd, registered in England and Wales, on the public record.
The refund window covers the rest — bring a live site over (the free migration makes that easy), run it for two real weeks, and let ordinary use answer what no sales page can.
Our interest, declared up front
This is a host writing about hosting, and we would rather say so plainly. No manufactured neutrality, no leaderboard paid for by referral cheques. Honesty traded for trust — and it reads better anyway.
Support means a person at any hour, and the remit covers the awkward practical questions other hosts hand straight back.
- Checks you can run again yourself
- Renewal rates published, not footnoted
- A free migration makes the trial easy
- Refund terms with no small print
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
The verdict, turned into an order
The EV SSL plan is this page's conclusion in product form — one rate, essentials inside, upgradeable in place.
The essentials inside, not added on
SSL, the migration, backups and mail come with every plan rather than appearing as checkout extras.
An upgrade path that is real
Shared, VPS and dedicated on one platform — today's choice never boxes tomorrow in.
NVMe and LiteSpeed as standard
The hardware other hosts keep behind premium tiers is simply the baseline build here.
One rate, published in the open
What you order at is what you renew at — the only comparison that counts is one we win by default.
A company you can look up
UK Health Care Support Ltd, registered in England and Wales — a host whose filing you can read before committing to anything.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Write the job down in one sentence
Write the workload and the audience in one line — for organisations deciding how far their certificate needs to go in proving who they are, that line alone usually removes half the candidate plans.
- 2
Compare on what year two costs
Introductory rates are the oldest device in this market; rank hosts by the second year instead and the order rearranges itself at once.
- 3
Run a real trial inside the refund window
Putting your own site on the platform answers what no review can, and free migration plus the refund terms take the risk out of trying.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- WebP image optimisation built in, at no extra charge
- 99.9% uptime as the target, watched around the clock
- Spam and virus screening on every mailbox by default
- Free SSL on every plan, reissued before the old one lapses
- Staging copies for trying a change before it goes live
- WordPress Toolkit, with the updates seen to for you
- Your existing site brought across by our engineers, at no charge
- PHP versions set per site from the control panel
- LiteSpeed caching in the server itself rather than bolted on by plugin
- Webmail in the browser plus IMAP, POP and SMTP for any client
Frequently Asked
The questions that come up most
Does anybody actually read certificate details?
Security reviewers, procurement teams and B2B partners running supplier due diligence do, clicking through to read the subject field. Retail customers see a padlock, register that the connection is encrypted, and go no further.
How long does EV issuance take?
Allow one to three working days. The authority checks your legal registration, your business address and the signing authority of whoever placed the order. None of that is technical, so put it in the project schedule alongside any other paperwork.
Do plans include copies I can restore myself?
Yes — every plan gets a daily copy, and the restore runs from your panel in minutes: files, databases or both, at three in the morning with no ticket queue in the way. Keeping a further copy offsite is still a sound habit, and nothing here stops you.
Will you move my existing site free of charge?
Yes. Open a ticket with the login for your current host and we bring the lot across — files, databases, mailboxes, configuration. You check the copy before DNS moves, and the old site keeps taking traffic right up to the moment the new one serves it, so nobody meets a gap.
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SSL Validation Levels (DV, OV, EV) (Glossary)
The plain-English definition this page rests on, with a worked example.
SSL Certificates
Free SSL on every plan, with wildcard and EV there when more is needed.
WordPress Hosting
WordPress looked after for you — LiteSpeed caching, staging copies and a daily backup.
Changing hosts? Run through our checklist first.
A plain order of work for a move nobody visiting will notice: which files go over first, how to carry the mail across without losing a message, when exactly to repoint DNS, and the two mistakes behind nearly every outage we are asked to rescue.
Do it properly this time.
Free SSL, a free migration, renewals billed at the original rate, and people on support around the clock. That is the whole of it.
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