Public Service Announcement to our beloved BFC Support blog audience: stop wasting your hard-earned money on SSL certificates! There is now a better – and free – SSL option the big companies don’t want you to know about.

Here’s the skinny. By now, most you are familiar with the need to secure your sites with an SSL certificate, so that your sites can load securely.

There are all kinds of benefits to doing this: better search engine rankings, avoiding browser warnings, supporting better internet security — the list goes on.

What some of our clients don’t realize, however, is that you probably don’t need to fork over your hard-earned cash to GoDaddy, NameCheap, or any other corporate “authority” to get an SSL certificate.

Until last year, the best solutions for SSL certificates charged various amounts for various types of certificates, up to $90 per year, in some circumstances.

That is no longer the case — but the word has been slow to get out.

I won’t name names, but last week a client forwarded a certificate renewal from NameCheap for which she paid $50 to GoDaddy.

Another client on Amazon Web Services paid more than $100 to set up a complex certificate authority on their EC2 account.

So here’s your public service announcement: in most cases, you don’t need to do this anymore!

Last year, a new, open-source certificate solution was announced, called “Let’s Encrypt.” It’s fast becoming the industry standard for issuing and renewing certificates for most websites.

The best part is that for most hosts, it’s free. As in, it costs $0 to secure a site.

There are, of course, exceptions. If you’re running a site that has particular credibility concerns — like if you’re collecting financial information and your site has been spoofed in the past — you might want to pursue a certificate that reflects a more complex vetting process.

Bottom line, if you are considering paying for a cert, reach out to us and ask about it first. We may be able to save you some money and future headaches.

Let me know if you have any questions — just reply here and we’ll get back to you.