Shared SSL or SSL?

[Rosathia]

Which do you prefer using for your online store- a shared SSL or SSL cert?

I'm leaning towards an SSL.

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Generally the price difference between the two is small enough that even if you make one or two extra sales in a whole year, it pays for the full SSL cert.

[Rosathia]

Thanks for your reply. After reading this article, I'm going to get the full- http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/356/Do-Security-Measures-Boost-Conversion

[DesignExtend-MSI]

Besides cost, there are many benefits to having your own:

1. Validity - having your own SSL lends more validity to your company.

2. Host Misconfigurations - many hosts misconfigure shared-ssl certs, causing restrictions (and some outright fatal errors). This doesn't happen with "good" hosts commony.

3. Security - although your host has access to your records anyway, having your own makes your data less vulnerable to other third-parties.

[dotCOM_host]

Also keep in mind - if you use a shared SSL certificate - all secure traffic on "your" site will not be registered in your Apache logs - it will be saved in your host's logs and you will never get access to it. This will skew your own web log analytics, and will "rob" you of potentially very useful information you could collect from your traffic stats. If you were using a shared SSL certificate, all that data will end up in your host's log files and they will have all the details on "your" traffic - and better yet, it will be mixed in with all other clients who also use the same shared SSL.

Cost aside (shared SSL certs are generally offered for free by hosting companies, full SSL certs are generally your responsibility), having your own SSL with your own URL in it is indeed the simplest and most effective way to convert more visitors into buyers, and to rid oneself from headaches associated with the URL changes between non-secure and secure modes, hardcoding objects to work simultaneously on both URLs, and so on. It's a very small price to pay for all that.

[praybould]

Can a ssl certificate cover more than one store?

I'm want to set up 2 stores on the same server/system, and realize that involves purchasing 2 MIVA licenses, but can my one ssl cert cover both?

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

No, SSL's are specific to a domain.

Even www.domain.com and domain.com are considered 2 different sites.

You can however, get a Wildcard SSL, and use *.domain.com where any subdomains under domain.com will be covered, but these are quite expensive for the average user. You mostly find these used by hosting providers and dedicated server users.

Can a ssl certificate cover more than one store?

I'm want to set up 2 stores on the same server/system, and realize that involves purchasing 2 MIVA licenses, but can my one ssl cert cover both?