Since I have wholesale access to domain names and SSL Certificates I opted to buy my own. My website was already sitting on a dedicated IP address. All I had to do was click on the link that took me to a page where I would submit my CSR request for the certificate. This portion is created on the web server. With this code you can buy a matching SSL certificate. It’s like a challenge/response key that assures security. If the keys don’t match when the certificate is installed, it cannot be installed and the website visitor cannot be tricked into a presumable safe web connection.

Overall the entire process was fairly easy and streamlined. I’d say even a less experienced webmaster can easily accomplish this without asking for too much help. Hostgator apparently has looked at this process very well and worked out a way to reduce errors dramatically. The only gotcha I found was the missing information about what Web Server / SSL combination (Apache + ModeSSL) was in use. I had to update the ticket just to be safe.

So, if you need ecommerce strength web hosting that includes an SSL certificate, Hostgator should definitely be on your list of web hosts to be considered.

Hostgator Homepage