SSL Certificates - Price vs. Features?

[Nutter]

What's the difference in the levels of SSL certificates. I see them offered anywhere from 20 bucks a year to several hundred bucks a year.

I'm making a go at an ecommerce site for the first time and am planning on getting an SSL certificate. For the time being I'm just using PayPal for payments and want to be able to put my logo on their checkout page, but eventually plan to go with a credit card merchant and keep all the stuff on site.

Basically I just want the SSL icon and https to show up without the browser popping up warnings about insecure tranfers and expired or unvalidated certificates.

And while I'm asking, is there a good tutorial that y'all know of explaining SSL. I've got a cursory idea how it works, but don't fully understand all the ins and outs.

[Corey Bryant]

You want one that offers at 128 bit encryption and will be recognized by most browsers.

Verisign has bought most of the companies actually. They are the number one issuer while Comodo is number two. We were using Geotrust but switched to Comodo because of more support.

While you can get some certs cheaper (especially if you have the CSR), it also depends on where you buy them. Some companies will buy a bulk of certs of they get them at a discount and then pass that discount back to you

-Corey