Carl reviews trusted certificate authorities to help you decide on the right one

Picking the best certificate authority can be a difficult choice. Different brands are aimed at different demographics and you may not fit neatly into one. Maybe you’re a small business owner with six different companies. Maybe you’re an Enterprise but you just have a single website. Maybe you’re a yeti.

It doesn’t matter, I’m going to give you a rundown of the top CAs and help you decide for yourself which Certificate Authority is right for you.

Factors to Consider when Choosing a CA

There’s a range of factors for you to consider when choosing CAs. Before I review any, I’d like to cover the criterion I’m using to evaluate.

Pricepoint

Different CAs come in at different price points. While you have Symantec on one end offering premium products at premium prices. All the way on the other end you have Let’s Encrypt which will give a free SSL certificate to anyone. Literally anyone.

Range of Offerings

What types of certificates does the CA sell? Is it limited to just a single validation level? Do they offer wildcards? What about EV? Multi-Domain? This all matters and some CAs have broader offerings than others.

Reputation

The reputation of your CA may or may not matter to you. On one hand, if you go with a top CA like Symantec you get the brand recognition that comes with deploying the Norton Secure site seal. Other CAs lack that quality.

Reliability

How long has this CA been around? Has it faced regular punitive action from the CAB Forum? Can you trust that this CA will still be trusted next year? You need to pick a reliable CA.

Warranties

Does the CA back its products with substantial warranties or are you getting the bare minimum in protection. Some CAs offer as much as a $2-million dollar warranty. Others offer nothing.

Reviewing Trusted Certificate Authorities

Let’s take a look at the top CAs and try to decide what’s right for you.

Symantec

Symantec is the biggest player in the SSL industry in terms of name recognition and reputation. The Norton Secured seal that comes with every Symantec product has been proven as the most recognizable symbol on the internet. With Symantec you enjoy premium products at premium prices.

GeoTrust

GeoTrust is a business-minded CA with business-class solutions across every validation level and certificate type. GeoTrust has been around over a decade and has over 150,000 clients around the world. GeoTrust is owned by Symantec and is one step down its value ladder.

Thawte

Thawte enjoys a tremendous international reputation as the first CA to issue for internationalized domain names. Today Thawte has customers in over 180 countries and provides support throughout the Global workday. Thawte is a Symantec sub-brand.

RapidSSL

Rounding out the Symantec family is RapidSSL, the fastest issued DV certificates on the market. Thanks to its completely automated issuance process you can order a RapidSSL certificate and have it emailed to you within seconds. RapidSSL is perfect for small websites and companies that need gap coverage between higher-value certificates. A complete RapidSSL review will give you the perfect picture about RapidSSL CA.

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