HTTPS & TLS
SSL costs nothing here. Pay only when the site asks for more
Host with us and the certificate is issued free, then reissued automatically for as long as you stay. Should you later need subdomain-wide cover or a verified company name, wildcard and EV are there.
$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
Why SSL Matters
What a certificate actually gets you
This is more than compliance paperwork. It guards whatever a visitor types, and tells them at a glance the site is safe to use.
Visitors see a padlock
A browser answers HTTPS with a padlock in the address bar. Go without and they mark your pages 'Not secure' — the first thing a visitor reads, before a word of your content.
Traffic scrambled the whole way
Between a visitor's browser and our servers, every login, form entry and card payment travels as ciphertext. Anyone intercepting the connection collects noise.
No expiry dates to diarise
Well before it lapses, the certificate quietly replaces itself. Nobody wakes to a dead padlock or a checkout throwing security warnings at customers over a weekend.
Search engines notice
Encrypted pages are preferred in ranking. Put two near-identical sites side by side and the one on HTTPS tends to finish ahead.
Proof of who is behind it
With EV, the company is vetted first and the confirmed name is then written into the certificate for anybody to read. That counts most on pages where customers hand over card details.
Live before you ask
Point the name's DNS at our network and the free certificate is issued and installed on the spot. There is nothing to buy and nothing to set up.
Included Free
The standard certificate costs nothing
Shared, WordPress, reseller, VPS, dedicated — whichever plan you take, a free certificate is part of it. Installation is automatic, cover reaches the name and every subdomain beneath it, and reissue happens quietly in the background. The padlock goes up once and stays up.
- The name and its subdomains both covered
- Live the moment DNS arrives here
- Replaced by itself before it lapses
- No teaser rate that jumps at renewal
Paid Tiers
The point where paying makes sense
Certain sites do grow past what the free certificate covers, and that is the point at which paid cover earns its place. A wildcard protects an unlimited spread of subdomains from one certificate. EV goes further, writing your verified company name into the certificate details — a sensible move for online retailers, membership platforms and any page handling sensitive data.
- DV (domain-validated) cover available
- One wildcard across all your subdomains
- EV where the highest trust is wanted
- Up to $1.5 million in warranty backing
Paying Extra
Most sites never need to pay
Encryption strength is identical whether you pay or not, and the included certificate reissues itself. Exactly two situations justify spending money here.
The certificate included with your plan reissues 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. The free one will not reach across unlimited subdomains out of a single file; for that you want Wildcard. Nor will it carry an audited company identity backed by a financial warranty, which means Extended Validation, which pays off chiefly when you take payments or logins and want the strongest trust signal available.
Want a warranty-backed certificate for one name, without the wildcard cover? That is still available — send us a request and we'll tell you straight whether it would do anything for your site.
Wildcard SSL Certificate
One certificate covering the name and every subdomain under it
$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 padlock appears on all of them together
- Backed by a $10,000 relying-party warranty
- Suits an app that invents subdomains as it goes
- Our engineers install it, and charge nothing to do it
- Issued the same day in most cases
- 256-bit encryption on a 2048-bit key
- Put it on as many servers as you care to
- Reissue it as often as you need
Orders are completed on Hosting Cheap, the billing system every one of our brands runs through.
EV SSL Certificate
Extended vetting writes the checked company name onto the certificate
$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 checks establish that the business exists and is registered
- The company name, once verified, is carried in the certificate
- As much assurance as a certificate is able to carry
- Backed by a $1,500,000 relying-party warranty
- Gives buyers confidence at checkout and sign-in
- We take you through validation from end to end
- 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
Orders are completed on Hosting Cheap, the billing system every one of our brands runs through.
The moment payment clears, we handle the validation and install the certificate for you. Wildcard is usually finished within a day; EV takes a few days longer, because the company behind the site has to be verified first.
The Process
Three moves, and only one of them is yours
- 1
Point the DNS here
The only hands-on part: put the name in your account and aim its DNS at our platform. Everything after that runs itself.
- 2
The platform picks it up
As soon as verification passes, the free certificate is ordered and put live on the name. Nothing to press, nothing to upload, no files to shuffle.
- 3
It keeps itself current
Each reissue happens before the old certificate runs out, so HTTPS and the padlock never drop. You will never need a reminder in a diary.
Standard
What the certificate covers
- A certificate at no cost on every plan
- Issued and installed automatically
- Your name and its subdomains covered
- Reissue handled in the background
- HTTPS-only redirects when you want them
- TLS 1.3 as standard
- Step-ups to DV, wildcard and EV
- Trusted in every mainstream browser
- Plain pricing, nothing added on
- Real people on support, at any hour
Asked A Lot
Certificates, without the jargon
Does every plan really include SSL?
Yes. A no-cost certificate comes with every hosting plan here. We issue it for you and keep it valid the whole time the site is hosted with us.
When does a paid certificate beat the free one?
For most sites, never — the free certificate encrypts the traffic and delivers the padlock, which is the whole requirement. Paid options add exactly two things. A wildcard pulls every subdomain under one certificate. An EV certificate adds an audited check on your company identity, which browsers and buyers both read as a stronger guarantee.
Do visitors see the padlock?
They do, from the moment it goes live: the padlock shows and the pages load over HTTPS. Where no valid certificate exists, browsers put a 'Not secure' label in the address bar instead.
Is the renewal mine to manage?
Not at all. The free certificate reissues itself in good time, with no prompt needed. On paid wildcard and EV certificates we write to you before the validation window opens, so the cover carries on unbroken.
Does HTTPS cost anything in speed?
Nothing you would measure. Today's TLS implementations are tuned hard, and HTTPS is the entry ticket for HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 — protocols that usually make a site quicker rather than slower.
Will one certificate cover every subdomain?
Your main name and its subdomains are already covered by the free certificate. Running subdomains at scale? A wildcard rolls them all into one certificate and keeps the administration down.
Put a padlock on everything you publish.
Any plan carries a self-reissuing certificate free, with wildcard or EV waiting for the day you need to prove exactly who stands behind the site.
Compare Our PlansBrowsers stopped being polite about missing encryption a long time ago. Every domain here gets a certificate free, installed and renewed with no reminder in anyone's calendar. In the engine room sit NVMe storage, LiteSpeed caching, our redundant London datacentre and engineers awake at three in the morning.
Set up for owners encrypting what visitors hand over: a free certificate on every domain, a free lift off your old host, automatic nightly backups, and no distance between the listed price and the invoice.
Free SSL as standard, paid SSL when required
That free certificate spans the domain and its subdomains, fits itself and renews punctually. Paid options exist for projects that want a wildcard across many subdomains, a longer warranty or an organisation-validated seal, issued quickly and installed by us if you would rather not.
Beneath the surface every certificate runs on the same platform: NVMe drives instead of spinning disks, LiteSpeed instead of a stock web server, and a 99.9% uptime figure written into the terms.
Where a paid certificate genuinely earns its keep
Billing ought to be uneventful: one figure, stated up front, repeated at renewal, with promotions labelled plainly rather than tucked into a footnote. Licences and issued certificates go live the moment they exist, so refunds on those are weighed case by case, while any hosting ordered alongside keeps its full 30-day money-back guarantee.
Basic encryption is never an upsell; it is standard on every domain and every plan. Paid certificates carry their prices on the page with the extras spelled out, so deciding whether you need one takes a minute.
Issue and renewal, fully automated
Issue and renewal happen automatically across the platform, with certificates installed and sites moved to HTTPS without downtime. Renewals fire well ahead of expiry, and a failure pages our engineers rather than only you.
The invisible work — patching, monitoring, replacing hardware, filtering — is included and done by us. It is most of what the money actually buys.
- Auto-renewed free SSL on every domain
- Wildcard and OV options for the projects that need 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 when they fail. A browser warning should never be how you find out.
Humans on the line
Engineers hold the queue at every hour, aiming at a reply inside 2 hours, or 1 hour when the site is down.
Next year costs the same
Every plan renews at the rate you began on, with no second price waiting further along.
99.9% uptime, under SLA
A redundant London datacentre, automatic failover, and monitoring that wakes an engineer before you notice anything.
A panel that stays out of the way
The controls sit where instinct expects them, which is most of what a decent panel owes anybody.
Scale up without relocating
Outgrowing a tier is fixed with one click in the panel rather than 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 what visitors hand over
- Every hosted domain gets SSL free
- Your migration is carried out by our engineers 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 any better than the free one?
No: the encryption is byte for byte identical, with the same strength and the same browser trust. Paying adds organisation validation, wildcard subdomain coverage and a warranty, which some businesses need for legal or procurement reasons. Most sites do perfectly well on the free one, and we will tell you as much.
How quickly can SSL certificates be up and running?
Straight away. Orders provision themselves, and if you would rather we set things up, the help desk is staffed whatever hour you are reading this.
Does the price move at renewal?
The same rate and the same amount. There is no introductory price here that quietly doubles once you have settled in.
What if SSL certificates proves to be the wrong call?
Licences and issued certificates go live at once, so refunds are settled case by case; contact the desk inside 7 days and we will find a fair outcome. Any hosting bought 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
Issue to padlock, including the redirect step in the middle.
SSL Certificates, Defined
What the padlock genuinely proves, and what it never claimed to.
Let's Encrypt or Paid SSL?
Where the free option is enough, and where paying starts to pay.