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Do I need an SSL certificate?

Read more!

An explanation of what SSL certificates are can be found here.

Our recommendation is that all our users have an SSL certificate covering their website.

Strictly speaking, unless a customer is entering sensitive (i.e. credit/debit card) information directly onto your website, then you don't need an SSL certificate by law, but we still recommend that you have one.

An SSL certificate is also now mandatory if you want to use certain third-party services to promote or enhance your website such as Google Shopping, Bing Shopping or the Google Reviews programme.

SSL certificates inspire trust and confidence. When a user subconsciously or consciously looks to the address bar in the browser and sees the padlock, they'll instantly feel better about the safety and security of your website. Your website visitors will also subconsciously associate the security of your website with the quality of the products that you are selling.

Our opinion is that the benefits of having an SSL certificate are huge (and growing) and that all store owners should have one, particularly when considering that it is a requirement if you want to use many external services.

This doesn't mean that an SSL certificate is mandatory on our platform, it is still completely optional, but we'd advise you to have one.

ShopWired provides a free SSL certificate as part of all packages that we offer. To setup one for your domain, follow the instructions here.


Can you use your own SSL certificate?

Unfortunately not.

Our platform is hosted on the Amazon Web Services hosting platform. The way that SSL certificates work is that an SSL certificate must have a single IP address assigned to it.

We host multiple websites on the same server, and unfortunately Amazon Web Services only allow an individual server to have a single IP address. This means that a server cannot host more than one SSL certificate despite hosting more than one website.

To get around this problem, we use a special type of SSL certificate and server configuration.

This means that you are unable to buy an SSL certificate from an external provider and use it on your website with us.

The good news is that we take care of all of the steps needed to successfully setup and install an SSL certificate on your website, so you don't have to (things like purchasing the certificate, domain verification, installation on the server).