Church Website Builders Should Provide SSL Certifications for Free
You’ve probably seen a lot of church website builders claiming that SSL certifications are included for free. However, some companies will charge extra to have SSL certifications. This article will explain what SSL certifications are and why this should be free.
SSL Certifications: What are they?
SSL Certifications are a data file on websites that protect user’s data and verifies the website source. These data files are made using trusted third-party companies. If you use a website and see the lock-icon on the top, then that website has a SSL Certification. If you are told that a website is insecure, then it doesn’t have an SSL certification. These certifications are similar to the various licenses the government gives out. These licenses are given out by a trusted third-party (government) so the end user can trust the business.
Your church website needs an SSL certification so that visitors can trust your website. Most people will click away from your website as soon as their browser says “this website is unsecured”. Additionally, Google will lower your search result rankings if you don’t have a secure website. If people search “churches near me”, you want to be first on Google, not the last!
If you are interested in learning more technical details, here is an article by CloudFlare.
Why you should expect SSL Certifications from your church website provider.
SSL certifications are the baseline for any website today, if you don’t have them, it is noticeable. In today’s world, SSL certificates are one of the first things you have for your website when you publish it to the world. If someone doesn’t offer SSL certificates, it shows they do not understand some fundamentals about building a website. There are many free resources online that explain what SSL certificates are and free tools to aid in getting them.
Why SSL Certificates should be free.
Why should they be free though? Doesn’t this require a lot of effort to set up for each website? Yes, these do take some technical knowledge and some effort to set up. However, there are many free tools that provide SSL certificates. Additionally, these tools are usually automated. For example, at Phos Site, we have our SSL certificates automated. This makes our SSL certificates practically free (minus the initial setup cost) for every new website we deploy.
Here are a few of the options for free SSL certificates.
You shouldn’t have to get SSL certificates yourself but we wanted to show examples to prove our point. If you still don’t believe us, TecMint, a linux blog, has an article titled 11 Best Free SSL Certificate Authority where you can find more options
Conclusion
Free SSL certifications should be a baseline expectation for any website builder due to the many free ways to automate SSL certificates. If your website provider doesn’t include these for free, then it might be time to rethink why you send them money in the first place.