Free SSL certificates are a new player on the certificate authority ground. Their main purpose is to remove the hassle of getting and maintaining an SSL certificate on your site.
While not providing the same level of trust as paid SSLs (they are domain validation based and do not include warranty over misuse/databreach), the free SSL certificates mark the path the Internet should be walking toward security.
After the latest cPanel & WHM update, we are now able to fully support and provide an option for you and your clients to install free SSL certificates on your sites.
What are the new free SSL certificates about?
Thanks to the AutoSSL plugin enabled in the latest version of cPanel&WHM (v58), Domain Validated Comodo-signed SSLs can now be requested automatically and installed at no extra cost for your customers under the cPanel reseller program.
The SSL certificate is issued by:
- Common name: cPanel, Inc.
- Certification Authority Organization: cPanel, Inc.
The CA (Certification Authority) is signed by Comodo – one of the leading brands on the SSL certificates scene:
- Common name: COMODO RSA
- Certification Authority Organization: COMODO CA Limited
What are the features of the new free SSL certificates?
The cPanel-powered free SSL certificates are issued with a 90-day lifespan and will be renewed and reinstalled automatically one week prior to expiration.
No actions are required by either you as a reseller or your end clients in order to renew the certificate.
While the SSL certificates are being installed absolutely automatically without any need of human interaction, clients will need to force an HTTPS:// connection over HTTP://.
The easiest way to do that is by editing or creating an .htaccess file into the root domain folder with the following content:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com/$1 [R,L]
To put the example above into action, just change example.com with your website domain.
NOTE: If you do not want your clients to take advantage of the free SSL certificates option, you can edit your Features from the Feature Manager within your WHM and disable the Auto SSL menu for your clients.
View Comments (2)
So is this a valid SSL option for sites that don't really resell anything like the blog/forum I run at viragohelp.com? I would like to have our members feel the SSL security as a positive. I am currently run a web hosting reseller site youruptime.net for the hosting provider domain. plus makingmoneyonlineforums.com and viragohelp.com. None of these sell anything except my youruptime.net which sells domains and web hosting. I have a dns cluster with 2 shared IPs set up on the reseller account. I am also building a music reselling account windjammermusic.net for a client I hope to have up by Oct 1st and plan on SSL and a dedicated IP for his site. Would a shared SSL be sufficient enough for it? I also have a 5th site in the works for another client that will involve e commerce. Any information to better help me make my decisions would be very helpful. Thank you for any suggestions in advance. Rob
Hello Rob. Thanks for asking. The free SSLs featured in the blog post are only valid for the cPanel reseller program. On the free reseller platform of which you are a member, we offer an option for your clients to get a free SSL on a shared IP address, which is basically a reasonable alternative to regular SSLs. Here you can read more about the benefits of SSLs on shared IPs: https://blog.resellerspanel.com/latest-news/shared-ips-for-ssl-certificates-in-the-control-panel.html
If you want to set an SSL certificate for your web hosting store youruptime.net (yes, SSL is a must for e-commerce stores nowadays), which you have a DNS cluster for, you can get a regular (paid) SSL certificate (through your store or via a third party) and we’ll install it for you manually. Let us know if you have more questions.