I host all my sites with the fabulous Chillidog hosting.
I get all new clients to sign up with chillidog too.
BUT sometimes clients come to me and they aready have a hosting co and dont want to change.
I have a client with 3 very simple spash page sites. No ecommerce or anything. Their hosting company charges $75 per domain per year … just so that it’s https… Also the sites were showing the page showing unsafe turn back.
Is this extortion? Chillidog do not charge extra for https
(I mean an additional $75 per cert… that does not include register and host)
It’s not extortion, but it’s probably overkill for the type of sites you described.
Paid Certificates have things like warranties that cover liability if the Certificate is compromised, tech support and longer expiration dates(let’s Encrypt expires every 90 days although they should automatically renew in most cases).
There’s also three levels of certificates available
Domain Validation (DV)
Organization Validation (OV)
Extended Validation (EV)
Lets Encrypt only offers the lowest base-level DV(Domain Validation).
To obtains OV SSL, your company or organization must undergo light business vetting.
To obtain EV SSL, is similar to OV, but a more extensive business vetting.
So for most small business sites a paid certificate is probably overkill, unless you want Or need the comfort of the liability warranty, say you are collecting privacy data or you’re running your own payment gateway(not using Something like PayPal or Stripe).