Buying Guide
Sizing up Hosting With Free SSL
Written for buyers who have spotted rival providers charging an annual fee for a basic certificate — the checks worth running, the trap worth avoiding, and the recommendation we would give a friend.
The short answer
If one line is all you read, make it this: a provider that issues a Let's Encrypt certificate on every plan without being asked, keeping paid certificates back for the genuine wildcard and organisation-validation cases that need them.
The rest of the page shows the working behind that call: which checks to run, the mistake to avoid, and how to verify every claim yourself before money moves.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
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This page is written for buyers who have spotted rival providers charging an annual fee for a basic certificate. If that is you, the decision does have a right answer — it simply rarely matches what commission-funded ranking tables are paid to print.
Begin from one fact about this market and the rest falls in behind it: since automated certificate authorities arrived, any charge for basic SSL has been pure margin. Machines request, validate, install and renew the certificate on a schedule, with no human being involved at any point.
The short list of checks that matter
This is the scorecard we would use — and we are content to be marked against it too:
Issuance and renewal fully automated, so the certificate never becomes an item on anybody's to-do list.
Coverage across every domain and subdomain on the account, not only the one printed on the invoice.
The certificate fitted properly with HTTPS redirects configured, rather than emailed to you to install yourself.
Paid wildcard and organisation-validation options stocked for when they are genuinely wanted, and never pushed when they are not.
What to eliminate first, and why it comes up so often
Providers billing you annually for a basic DV certificate that costs them nothing whatever to issue, which is about as pure a junk fee as hosting produces.
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.
What we would buy in your position
A provider that issues a Let's Encrypt certificate on every plan without being asked, keeping paid certificates back for the genuine wildcard and organisation-validation cases that need them.
In concrete terms that is our Sprint 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.
Support means a person at any hour, and the remit covers the awkward practical questions other hosts hand straight back.
Ten minutes of checking, well spent
A host worth your money survives scrutiny: check the renewal figure is published up front rather than tucked into a footnote, put a real question to support at an inconvenient hour and judge the reply, read the refund policy for carve-outs, and look up the company registration — a legitimate business leaves a paper trail.
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.
Why we can afford to answer straight
Most 'best hosting' writing is ranking for hire. Our motive is simpler and stated plainly: we recommend the setup we would sell you either way — which leaves the rest of the page free to be useful.
The rate you register at is the rate you renew at, so year two costs precisely what year one did — nothing lying in wait on the invoice.
- 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 essentials inside, not added on
SSL, the migration, backups and mail come with every plan rather than appearing as checkout extras.
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.
A refund without an argument
If we are not the fit, leaving is one request rather than a negotiation — which is why we invite the test.
Support you can test before paying
Put a hard question to us before you pay — how a host behaves pre-sale is the best it will ever treat you.
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.
The verdict, turned into an order
The Sprint plan is this page's conclusion in product form — one rate, essentials inside, upgradeable in place.
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 buyers who have spotted rival providers charging an annual fee for a basic certificate, 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
- NVMe SSD storage on every tier, not only the dear ones
- 99.9% uptime as the target, watched around the clock
- Upgrades applied in place, with no migration when you change plan
- LiteSpeed caching in the server itself rather than bolted on by plugin
- Staging copies for trying a change before it goes live
- PHP versions set per site from the control panel
- Spam and virus screening on every mailbox by default
- WordPress Toolkit, with the updates seen to for you
- The name's first year included when you order annually
- cPanel, which is what most of the industry already runs
Frequently Asked
The questions that come up most
Is the encryption on a free certificate as good?
Identically. The cryptography does not vary. What money buys is wildcard coverage, organisation validation or a warranty, which are procurement features rather than a stronger lock. On the overwhelming majority of sites, the free DV certificate is the end of the matter.
Is there anything I have to switch on?
Nothing at all. A certificate issues as soon as a site is added to the account and renews itself indefinitely thereafter. The only thing worth checking is that HTTP forwards to HTTPS, and that redirect is on by default.
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.
Does hosting include mail?
Yes — every hosting plan includes mailboxes at your own name, with webmail, IMAP, POP and SMTP plus spam filtering on from the start. There is standalone email hosting too, for a name whose website lives somewhere else.
Keep reading
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A buying brief without spin, written for publishers whose articles draw genuine crowds and, now and then, an outright surge.
SSL Validation Levels (DV, OV, EV) (Glossary)
The full definition, along with the practical consequence nobody bothers to mention.
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VPS Hosting
KVM virtual servers — root access, DDoS filtering, one flat monthly figure.
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.
Your site has earned better hosting.
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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