As official Comodo Product and Service Providers, we are pleased to inform all our new and existing customers that you are all entitled to a 90 Day Trial SSL Certificate for each domain you make a request for.
As you know, COMODO is one of the most well known Certificate Authorities in the world that will validate that your domain belongs to a real owner and not a bot.
Why get a Comodo Trial Certificate?
If you are starting a website, or are already at the phase to make the most of it, you will require an SSL certificate. This used to be optional, but as of July 2018, this became mandatory as all web browsers will label a website not running with SSL as Not-Secure. The wording may differ, but the meaning is the same.
On top of that, search engines such as Google will give priority to websites registered with HTTPS URLs (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure Universal Resource Locator) and drop in ranking to pages without it.
Since the trial period is of 90 days, this will give you ample time to test and make sure that your website is performing as you intend it to, under the secure protocol. This will help speed up development and reduce costs, as you won't have to worry about purchasing an SSL Certificate for yoru domain, until near the expiration date of your tests and trial.
The Comodo Trial SSL certificate is mostly requested by our VPS and Dedicated hosting users.
Is the Trial Certificate Free?
The trial SSL Certificate is FREE for all our customers running cPanel on their BZVweb servers. There may be a small fee to install the certificate on other control panels and cloud based hosting plans we offer.
You will also be provided with a Trust Logo by Comodo (like the one on our footer). You can install it easily by following the prompts in the email confirmation you'll receive. We can install it for you on your website for a small fee.
We normally won't install our Trial SSL Certificate on a third party's web server. But should we accept, there will be a small fee and we will require temporary access to your control panel.
If you have questions or require a quote, please contact our sales and billing department for further assistance.
What is the difference with the Free Let's Encrypt SSL?
You may have probably noticed some of our servers already have Let's Encrypt FREE SSL installed on the ROOT level, already making you compliant with the new web security rules. However, if your server still isn't using this SSL Certificate, then you have the choice of the Comodo Trial Certificate; or request the installation of a temporary free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate, while you wait for the root level SSL to be available on your active account.
The following table shows the main differences and similarities between the two:
| Let's Encrypt | Comodo | |
|---|---|---|
| Certificate Authority | LetsEncrypt.org | COMODO CA |
| Validation Options | DV (Domain) |
DV (Domain) |
| Encryption bits | 2,048 | 2,048 |
| Validation Level | Root Level (on existing accounts) Domain Level (on trial requests) |
Per Domain (for trial option) |
| Warranty | none | up to $10,000usd |
| Security Trust Seal | none | YES |
| Sub-Domain Protection | yes (with DNS validation) | no (except www) |
| Email Encryption | yes (with DNS validation) | no |
| Validity | 90 days (renewable) | 90 days (non-renewable) |
| Price (bzvweb clients) | Free to cPanel users | Free to cPanel users |
What happens after the Comodo Trial is over?
The simplest answer is, you will no longer receive their SSL Certification and you will have to install either a Free or Paid SSL Certificate from your Certificate Authority of choice.
If you are running a BZVweb Shared or Cloud Hosting plan, then chances are that you will already have AutoSSL (Let's Encrypt Free SSL) on your plan's root level. Your certificate will automatically switch from the trial to the automatic SSL certificates with basic protection.
If having the SSL warranty in case something happened (encryption was hacked, encrypted web forms were intercepted, etc), then you should consider renewing with a paid SSL Certificate and leave the less important subdomains or additional domains receive the basic protection.
When is a paid SSL Certificate better than a FREE alternative?
As a rule of thumb, if you handle client data on a regular basis, including payment information, and other personally identifiable data and transactions, it is best to use a paid certificate with a warranty just in case something went wrong. but for simple ecommerce or informative websites (including blogs), then opting for the Free SSL certificate is good enough.
Do NOT go the self-signing route. While it is also free, it will n ot be validated by major web browsers and will display a security warning to all visitors, instead of your actual web page. While it is secure, it will unfortunately send away your clients to a website that does not display that error.
Should you have further questions or to request the installation of the SSL Certificate (free or comodo paid or trial), please contact our customer service departments for additional help.
