What type of validation do you need? There are three types of validation: Domain Validation (DV), Organization Validation (OV), and Extended Validation (EV). For OV and EV the company details will be verified during the validation, which will create more confidence for your customers.

Domain Validation is the simplest form of validation, only domain control will be checked, and it will provide you with a secure connection. DV certificates are typically used for blogs, contact forms etc. Since with DV certificates there is no validation of the organization behind the domain name, aside from a secure connection, it will not provide any trust level.

Organization Validation includes an additional form of validation. Besides domain control, the Certificate Authority also verifies the organisation. OV certificates conform to the RFC standards and allow visitors of your website to verify the organization behind the site, leading to an increased level of trust.

Extended Validation is the most extensive validation method. As with OV, the Certificate Authority also verifies the organization, but does so in a more extensive way, for example by doing a callback. This extended validation is reflected visually in the browser, by making the address bar green. The organization name is displayed inside the green address bar. This makes it extremely easy for your customers to identify your website, and results in the highest trust level. This type of certificate is generally used for commercial websites and webshops.

There are two types of SSL certificates:

Single domain; with a single domain certificate, you can secure one domain name.

Wildcard; with a wildcard certificate you can secure multiple sub-domains, like *.example.com. Every sub-domain will be secure.