An SSL certificate is used to provide security on online communications. When a web browser contacts a website secured with an SSL certificate, the certificate encrypts the connection. The certificate encrypts all information passed through the website. This means that your visitor’s private information such as payment details and other personal information is safe and secure.
The certificates offer different levels of security, meaning that they vary in price. However, did you know that you can get an SSL certificate for free from your host provider? In this post, we are going to discuss the best web hosting providers that offer a free SSL certificate.
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting was founded in 2001 and is known best for offering among the fastest speeds among all popular hosting providers.
They offer shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, reseller hosting, dedicated hosting, and domain registration. Shared hosting comes with three plans – Lite, Swift and Turbo – and they all come with a free SSL certificate. This means that you will save some money in buying an SSL certificate. Their prices are also competitive and fairly affordable for small businesses or beginners.
A2 Hosting has a very supportive customer support (online chat, phone support, and a ticket system) and a lot of documentation to guide you when you are facing issues. When it comes to security, your server will be protected by HackScan, a free service that monitors and scans for malware and thwarts any form of attacks 24/7. With A2 Hosting, you are assured of getting a fast, secure and reliable web hosting for your website.
Pros
- The servers are very fast
- A very responsive customer support team and plenty of online documentation.
- The use of HackScan ensures that your server is secure from malware and attacks.
- You get an all-time money guarantee.
- They offer free site migration.
Cons
- There is a rise in fees when renewing a plan, yet they do not tell you this the first time you are buying the plan.
- Some users have lately complained of a slip in uptime.
- They do not offer a free domain on all plans.
Shared Hosting Pricing
| Plan | Lite | Swift | Turbo |
| Price Per Month | $ 3.92 (at 51% off) | $ 4.90 (at 51% off) | $ 9.31 (at 51% off) |
| Storage | Unlimited SSD | Unlimited SSD | Unlimited SSD |
| Databases | 5 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Websites | 1 Website | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| SSL | Free | Free | Free |
Bluehost
Since being established in 2003, Bluehost has grown to become one of the most used hosting providers in the world. They claim to be hosting over two million websites currently, which is quite a big number.
Bluehost offers one of the best uptime guarantees, with an uptime of up to 99.98%. They offer shared hosting, shared WordPress hosting, WooCommerce hosting, VPS hosting, managed WordPress hosting, and Dedicated hosting. Bluehost gets an edge over its competitors from the fact that WordPress – the biggest content management system – recommends the use of Bluehost for hosting WordPress websites.
Its shared hosting has four plans and they all come with a free SSL certificate, a free domain name, and an unlimited bandwidth. You will also get a free drag and drop website builder for those who are not web developers but would like to design their own websites. The only thing that I think lets Bluehost down is its lack of free website migration. They will charge you close to $ 150 to migrate a website from another host to their servers.
Pros
- They offer a solid and good uptime compared to its competitors.
- Storage is more than adequate. It is unlimited on all shared plans except the basic plan that offers 50GB SSD storage.
- All plans in shared hosting have unlimited bandwidth.
- The plans are relatively cheap compared to its competitors.
- An amazing WordPress integration.
Cons
- Some users have complained of unresponsive support from the support team.
- They do not offer good backup options.
- Hidden costs especially when getting add-ons.
- They do not offer free website migration.
- All their servers are based in the US.
Shared Hosting Pricing
| Plan | Basic | Plus | Plus Choice | Pro |
| Price Per Month | $ 7.99 (currently at $ 3.95) | $ 10.99 (currently at $ 5.95) | $ 14.99 (currently at $ 5.95) | $ 23.99 (currently at $ 13.95) |
| Websites | 1 website | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Storage | 50 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Free Domains | 1 Domain | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| SSL | Free | Free | Free | Free |
SiteGround
SiteGround was founded in 2003 by university students in Bulgaria and has grown over the years to be home to over two million domain names. It is known best for its amazing customer support as well as flexibility among other features.
SiteGround offers web hosting, WordPress hosting, WooCommerce Hosting, and cloud hosting. Their services are fast, secure and always up to date with current technologies. Technologies such as Nginx, PHP7, HTTP/2, their super cacher and HHVM are known to make it faster and reduce load time. They also have their own backup system.
All plans in SiteGround come with free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates, saving you a lot of money and making sure that your website is secure. If you want a higher level of security, you can get the Premium SSL certificate as add-ons which will cost you extra. The free certificate is automatically applied to your domain names and automatically renewed when it expires.
Pros
- Very fast speeds on their servers.
- Guaranteed good uptime compared to competitors.
- Responsive customer support.
- Availability of a backup system.
- Free website migration.
- Different server locations for you to choose the one that best suits you.
- Unmetered bandwidth on all plans.
Cons
- The price gets extremely high when renewing.
- They tend to restrict users to long term contracts.
- They offer limited disk storage.
Shared Hosting Pricing
| Plans | StartUp | GrowBig | GoGeek |
| Price Per Month | $ 3.95 (Regular $ 11.95) | $ 5.95 (Regular $ 19.95) | $ 11.95 (Regular $ 34.95) |
| Websites | 1 Website | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Storage | 10 GB | 20 GB | 30 GB |
| Bandwidth | ~ 10,000 Visits Monthly | ~ 25,000 Visits Monthly | ~ 100,000 Visits Monthly |
InMotion Hosting
InMotion Hosting is one of the oldest hosting companies we have today. This comes with an advantage as they have constantly been improving on the services they offer. They stand out from all other hosting companies due to their amazing technical support and the variety of hosting plans that they offer.
They offer a free SSL certificate on almost all their plans. The SSL certificates are, however, not added to your website automatically. All you need to do is to navigate to your server settings and turn the SSL certificate on. The plan you purchase determines the kind of SSL certificate that you get. The shared hosting comes with a free SSL certificate.
The shared hosting comes with three plans – Launch, Power and Pro – all with some amazing features such as unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email and unlimited storage. InMotion hosting gives a 90-day money-back guarantee, which I think is more than enough time for someone to know if the company meets all their requirements. These features make this company stand out from the rest.
Pros
- Offers a 90-day moneyback guarantee.
- They have an amazing technical support team.
- Amazing server speeds and good uptime.
- They offer easy integration with other applications.
- It comes with a free site transfer.
- Free automated backups for up to 10GB storage.
Cons
- They limit you to a 24-month subscription if you want to get the low pricing on their website.
- The use of the AMP dashboard, which is not popular, can be confusing at times.
Shared Hosting Pricing
| Plan | Launch | Power | Pro |
| Price Per Month | $ 3.99 at 50% off | $ 5.99 at 40% off | $ 13.99 at 12% off |
| Websites | 2 Websites | 6 Websites | Unlimited |
| Domain | Free | Free | Free |
| Storage | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | |
| SSL | Free | Free | Free |
HostGator
HostGator is a popular hosting company established in 2002 and offers shared, reseller, virtual private server, and dedicated web hosting.
They offer a free SSL certificate that renews automatically on all the hosting plans that it provides. This makes sure that your website hosted with them will always be secure without you having to worry about it.
It offers one of the best options for beginners and small companies that want to host small websites. Their pricing is also a little bit lower than most of its competitors making it ideal for beginners. You will also get amazing features with such prices, so you do not have to worry about the features offered compared to those of competing companies.
Pros
- It has a strong and very stable uptime.
- 45-day moneyback guarantee.
- Provides phone, live chat, email, and a knowledge base customer support system.
- You get a free website migration from other hosts.
Cons
- They charge up to $ 15 for automated backups. This is quite expensive when there are other companies offering this for free.
- The cheap prices on their website only apply when you purchase a plan for up to a certain period.
Shared Hosting Pricing
| Plan | Hatchling | Baby | Business |
| Price Per Month | $ 2.75 | $ 3.95 | $ 5.95 |
| Domain | Free | Free | Free |
| Websites | 1 Website | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| SSL | Free | Free | Free |
DreamHost
Dreamhost is one of the oldest hosting companies and has being officially recommended by WordPress, giving it an advantage over other companies. It claims to have hosted over 1.5 million websites by the end of 2019.
Dreamhost offers Shared hosting, VPS, Dedicated hosting, Cloud hosting, Shared hosting, WordPress hosting and Managed WordPress hosting. This wide variety of hosting means that they have a lot of experience in the business and they offer top of the range services for all their hosting plans.
All the plans with Dreamhost come with the Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate for free. They also offer the Sectigo Verified SSL at a cost of $ 15 per year. The Sectigo Verified SSL certificate gives you a certificate seal of trust, something that you do not get with the free SSL certificate. If you have multiple domains and subdomains, you will be required to install separate SSL certificates for them since Dreamhost does not support WildCard SSL.
Pros
- It is officially recommended by WordPress, meaning they offer good hosting services.
- Offers strong security features.
- Dreamhost gives unlimited data transfers per month.
- 97-day moneyback guarantee.
- Unlimited bandwidth on all plans and fast SSD storage.
- Free SSL certificate and WP website builder.
Cons
- It costs up to $ 99 for website migration.
- They offer complicated phone support that has a callback link on your Dreamhost control panel. This costs extra on the basic plan.
- They do not have Windows-based servers.
Shared Hosting Pricing
| Plan | Shared Starter | Shared Unlimited |
| Price Per Month | $ 4.95 | $ 10.95 |
| Websites | 1 Website | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| $ 1.67 per month | Free Unlimited Email | |
| SSL | Free | Free |
GoDaddy
GoDaddy is an American based and popular hosting provider that has evolved over the years. It is known better for selling domain names, but it also provides hosting services.
They offer four shared hosting plans – Economy, Deluxe, Ultimate, and Maximum. They also offer free SSL certificates, but with a catch. The free SSL certificates are only offered on the Ultimate and Maximum plans. The catch gets even deeper in that with the Ultimate plan, the free SSL certificate is only offered for one year. You will have to purchase an SSL certificate after the first year (at $ 79.99). With the Ultimate Plan, you get a lifetime free SSL certificate.
If you decide to get the WordPress hosting plans, you will find that they have the same terms just like the shared hosting plans. However, on all the VPS and dedicated hosting, you will the SSL certificate for free, but only for the first year. Their servers run on Windows and/or Linux operating systems.
Pros
- Has amazing customer support.
- Offers free backups on most of its plans.
- Good uptime and amazing page load speeds.
- Offers over 100 one-click install apps.
- It is easy to buy an SSL certificate as an add-on.
Cons
- If you are not careful, you will come across hidden costs. For example, you have to sign up to a certain period for you to get prices displayed on their website.
- The cheap plans do not have a free SSL certificate making them expensive if you want to purchase it as an extra.
- Their moneyback guarantee is not straightforward. An annual plan will get a moneyback guarantee but anything less than that will give you only 48 hours to ask for a refund.
Shared Hosting Pricing
| Plan | Economy | Deluxe | Ultimate | Maximum |
| Price Per Month | £ 2.99 (£ 5.99 when you renew) | £ 3.99 (£ 7.99 when you renew) | £ 6.99 (£ 12.99 when you renew) | £ 9.99 (£ 18.99 when you renew) |
| Websites | 1 Website | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Storage | 100 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Domain | Free with annual plan | Free with annual plan | Free with annual plan | Free with annual plan |
| SSL | Not Free | Not Free | Free | Free |
Conclusion
Having an SSL certificate on your website is very important in making sure that the website is secure and your visitors’ personal information is encrypted. It gets even better if you get a hosting provider that gives you the SSL certificate for free. Do you have any experience with regards to SSL certificates with any of these hosting providers? Kindly share with us in the comment section below.