Secure your site and improve your Google rating with an SSL certificate. You can purchase an SSL certificate for your domain or a wildcard certificate for all of your subdomains directly from your MacHighway client area. And best of all, we will install it for you.
Sections
- What is an SSL certificate?
- What types of SSLs are available?
- How do I purchase an SSL?
- Installing your new SSL certificate
What is an SSL certificate?
While the technical explanation of what exactly an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate is could take up several articles, what it means to most web site owners is that it is used to secure your website. It does this by encrypting data sent between your end users and the hosting server. This encryption ensures that if any sensitive data is intercepted by "bad guys", they will not be able to interpret it. When your site is protected by an SSL certificate, your users will be confident that their information will be safe.
Historically, the encryption that an SSL certificate provides has been reserved for sites where end users are entering important information, such as credit card numbers or payment information, such as e-commerce stores. However, in todays world, all of your personal information is valuable to advertisers and spammers alike, such as your email or even your physical address. With internet privacy such a hot button issue, users are becoming more aware if a site is SSL protected or not.
And, even if your users are not aware of SSL encryption, most modern browsers, including Safari, Chrome, Edge and FireFox, will warn users if a site is not protected with SSL. These browsers will label an unencrypted site as "unsafe", even if your site does not require any personal information, such as a simple information page. Needless to say, this warning will drive your potential customers away.
What types of SSLs are available?
There are many different types of SSL certificates available to domain owners. These range basic domain validation (DV) certificates to expensive origination (OV) or extended (EV) validation certificates. For most users, a domain validation certificate will be all you need. The organization and extended certificates are more aimed at large companies and corporations, and are significantly more expensive and require more documentation to obtain. For this reason, we only offer domain validation SSL certificates.
However, we do offer two different types of DV SSL certificates. These are the regular SSL and the wildcard SSL.
SSL Certificate
An SSL certificate will protect one domain and its www. subdomain:
example.com
www.example.com
If you only have a simple website, this is typically all you need.
Wildcard SSL Certificate
A wildcard SSL Certificate will protect one domain as well, but will also protect all of the subdomains of that domain.
example.com
www.example.com
blog.example.com
store.example.com
If you have a more complicated website, one that perhaps also includes a blog and store, it may be worth it for you to purchase a wildcard SSL. If you were to use standard SSL certificates, each subdomain would require its own SSL certificate.
How do I purchase an SSL?
You can purchase a new SSL certificate from your MacHighway client area. If you do not know how to access your client area, you can find out here.
You can find our SSL certificate offering here. Or you can click on the "Order New Services" link in the Shortcuts menu in the lower left-hand side.
Choose your SSL certificate and your domain, and proceed to the checkout page.
Installing your new SSL certificate
Once you have purchased your new SSL certificate and processed your payment, you will receive an email from our team asking for you to provide the contact information for your SSL certificate. This information will be used to generate the SSL certificate. Once you reply to our email with your information, our team will start installing your SSL for you, and let you know when they are finished.
Your SSL certificate will be good for 1 year and will need to be reinstalled each year. You will receive an invoice every year for your new certificate, until you decide to cancel.
Still Having Issues?
If you are still having issues, you can contact our Customer Support in the following methods:
Live Chat
You can connect to our Live Chat Support Team from your MacHighway Client Area. If you are not sure how to do this, you can find a guide here.
Our Live Chat team is available Monday to Friday from 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM Eastern Time.
Support Ticket
You can submit a support ticket to our Support Team from your client area.
Our ticket Support Team is available 24/7/365.
Phone support
You can contact our Phone Support Team using the following number:
- US/Canada 1-888-974-0334
- International 1-727-800-3606
Our Phone Support team is available Monday to Friday from 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM Eastern Time.
