Hostgator Free RapidSSL Certificate Review

We needed cost saving option for our Free Health Foundation. We found while browser window marketing that Hostgator provides Free RapidSSL. This is 100% genuine full SSL certificate which costs $49 per year. RapidSSL Certificate means Certificate from GeoTrust and it falls among reliable SSL Certificate Providing Authority both us after various tests and Rackspace – keep in mind, it is not possible to move the certificate from Hostgator’s server to your Cloud Server. The SSL certificate is bound to a domain name, but the webserver links the certificate to the IP address. On a shared server each website using SSL must have a unique IP to ensure that the web server knows which domain the SSL session should be for. So, you will get a bonus free dedicated IP too. Not bad for project websites, personal websites etc. We really do not need a full server for a website with very low traffic.

Obviously, for this website, we need bigger plan and possibly use either a wildcard or an Extended Validation SSL Certificate. EV makes the Green Address bar – green means go, recall Google uses green colored links in search Ads. Blue to the most means – something clickable, it is the standard of hyperlinks to the most users! Obviously, 95% users are not web masters! Back to the topic.

Hostgator Free RapidSSL Certificate Review

So, we are doing a compromise on hosting part – it must be clear. It is a shared, cPanel installed (I hugely hate any web control panel, it practically waste the resource and opens up vulnerabilities). Hostgator, as far we know, has no own data center. So, it is not really like Digital Ocean or Rackspace or even OpenShift, Heroku etc. PaaS. But they run on OpenStack. Actually Hostgator uses Cloud Setup on OpenStack. We joke with the shared servers, but actually its quite difficult to administer a node with few hundreds accounts.

Our compromise is for couple of reasons – getting a free SSL certificate plus a somewhat good hosting with a practical uptime of 99%. So, we must judge our choice by calculating the total cost of ownership for one year for Hostgator and compare against Rackspace and Digital Ocean like growing leaders. Digital Ocean is going to be leader, we tested their servers, honestly they are almost comparable with Rackspace. Definitely Rackspace is Rackspace. You can read our articles like Comparison of Rackspace, DigitalOcean and Amazon IaaS, Our Impression about DigitalOcean Cloud Server etc.

We have set the parameters, now let us calculate.

Hostgator Free RapidSSL Certificate Review Based on Measurable Units

My mother looks beautiful has no measurable parameter! We must use some measurable parameters while using any service. There are non-measurable parameters like support. Let us calculate the total cost of ownership for Rackspace 1 GB server with SSL – they have calculator, for 30K – 40K page views with single server setup, Cloud Files, it is around $60 USD per month in pay as you go model. But that SSL certificate is not on pay as you go model, so add $49 instant fee. As you can open a dev account on the first month, practically first month’s cost will be practically waived off (unofficially). So, here it goes :

First Month : $49 for RapidSSL certificate
Second to 12th month : $60 USD per month for hosting
Total cost of ownership for a fiscal year = $60 USD x 11 months + $49 = $709

It is kind of semi-managed. Managed will cost over $1500 extra per annum. The advantage is the excellent quality of Rackspace. It is great for money earning sites. IP is white listed. Google possibly takes Rackspace as one of the best web host.

Now, let us calculate the total cost of ownership for Digital Ocean 1 GB server with SSL – they do not have calculator, for 30K – 40K page views with single server setup, Cloud Files extra from Rackspace, it is around $20 USD per month in pay as you go model. But that SSL certificate is not on pay as you go model, so add $49 instant fee again. As you can use coupon on the first month, practically first month’s cost will be practically halved. So, here it goes :

First Month : $49 for RapidSSL certificate + $10 USD for Hosting after adding coupon
Second to 12th month : $20 USD per month for hosting and CDN
Total cost of ownership for a fiscal year = $20 USD x 11 months+ $10U SD + $49 = $279

Now, let us calculate the total cost of ownership for Hostgator with the Free SSL – I guess 30K – 40K page views with Business Account will work fine, Cloud Files extra from Rackspace, it is around $16 USD per month in flat payment model. But that SSL certificate is fully free. As you can use coupon on the first month, practically first month’s cost will be practically $5. So, here it goes :

First Month : $5
Second to 12th month : $16 USD per month for hosting and CDN
Total cost of ownership for a fiscal year = $60 USD x 11 months = $176

You can open an account on Hostgator using this link and apply this coupon TheCustomizeWindowsJune2 to get a flat $9.94 Off (by default, you’ll get $5 off, apply this coupon instead of the default). So, for $5 you can test for one month. If you can pay $279 or $709, possibly you can test with $5 for the first month. Also, you can check our website under development – Free Health Foundation or the IP address – 162.144.5.196. You’ll get Digital Ocean’s coupon on official Twitter Account of Digital Ocean. Another way to test non-free SSL is to go for monthly plan, that will cost around $7 per month for RapidSSL. For project like ours, Hostgator is probably not a bad option. If you want to keep one website at $HOME folder’s root (that is what is symlinked) ; you can use SSH easily like we wrote here. Do not host multiple websites with SSL (others will go paid) on one account, it will get very complex.

We usually do not advocate to use Shared Hosting for serious websites, but here the compromise is case specific.