If you’re looking to purchase web hosting, it’s important for you to know that an SSL certificate is a must-have. Without an SSL certificate, browsers will show a “Not Secure” message whenever users visit your website.
I’m sure you don’t want that to happen as you’ll lose the trust of your users and potential customers.
Luckily, today there are so many WordPress hosting providers that offer free SSL certificates. Yes, you read that right. Why pay $50/year for an SSL certificate when you can get it for free?
In this article, I’ll share some of the best WordPress hosting with free SSL certificates offered with their hosting plans. These hosting providers will help you save money from buying an SSL certificate.
That being said, let’s take a look at the different WordPress hosting with free SSL certificates.
Hosting | Staring Price | Features | More Info |
Bluehost | $2.95/mo |
| |
HostGator | $2.75/mo |
| |
DreamHost | $2.59/mo |
| |
GreenGeeks | $2.49/mo |
| |
Hostinger | $1.39/mo |
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Kinsta | $24/mo |
| |
WPX Hosting | $20.83/mo |
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Cloudways | $10.00/mo |
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Is Free SSL Certificate Safe?
A common question people have when talking about SSL certificates is that are free SSL certificates safe? Why do paid or premium SSL certificates exist when you can get them for free?
You might be thinking that free SSL must not be as secure as paid SSL certificates. Well, that’s not the case.
To understand whether free SSL certificates are safe, we first need to understand the differences between free and paid SSL certificates.
And for that, it’s important to understand what Certificate Authority (CA) is. Certificate Authority is an entity that issues digital certificates. A digital certificate basically verifies the ownership of a public key named to that entity.
There are various Certificate Authorities out there that issue digital certificates. One such authority is Let’s Encrypt which is a non-profit CA. They offer free SSL certificates as a non-profit entity.
But, the level of encryption in a free SSL is the same as paid SSL.
So, where’s the difference?
In the case of free SSL, the CA only verifies the ownership behind a domain name. So, a website may appear to be secure but there’s no way to find out who is running the website and whether they’re a real business or not.
With paid SSL, the CA not only verifies the ownership of your domain but also of your business. They verify ownership of your entire business or organization which is commonly referred to as business authentication.
Besides this, paid SSL also comes with the benefits of support so that you can get help any time you want. With free SSL, if you break anything or run into an error, you are at the mercy of online blogs, tutorials, and videos.
Lastly, a free SSL has a validity of 30-90 days and after that, you’ll have to renew the SSL certificate again. With paid SSL, the certificate validity is usually around 1-2 years.
In most cases, a free SSL is the way to go but if you’re an enterprise or a big eCommerce business, having a paid SSL might be a better idea.
1. Bluehost
Bluehost is one of the biggest names in the hosting industry as they’ve been in the business since 2002.
Bluehost offers WordPress hosting at affordable rates with a free SSL certificate. But that’s not it. You also get many other benefits such as a free domain name for 1 year, free Cloudflare CDN, and 1-click WordPress install.
It’s also officially recommended by WordPress as the best choice for hosting your WordPress site.
What I like about Bluehost is that their dashboard is very clean and minimal making it easy to manage your website. They offer a 1-click installer that lets you install WordPress on your website with a single click.
Moreover, you can update your WordPress plugins and themes right from your Bluehost dashboard.
The free SSL offered by Bluehost is powered by Let’s Encrypt which is the leading CA for free SSL certificates.
Here is an overview of the features you get with using Bluehost:
- Free SSL
- Free Domain for 1 Year
- 1-Click WordPress Installer
- Free CDN
- Spam Protection
- SSD Storage Drives
- Daily Malware Scan
Bluehost offers many different hosting services based on your use case. They offer shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, reseller hosting, WooCommerce hosting, and Managed hosting.
For your WordPress site, you should go ahead with their shared hosting plans as they’re very affordable and can handle decent traffic.
Here are the pricing plans of Bluehost’s shared hosting:
The pricing starts at $2.95/month for hosting a single site. For hosting unlimited sites, you can choose the Plus and Prime plan.
All the Bluehost hosting plans include a free SSL certificate.
2. HostGator
HostGator is also a very popular hosting provider that offers a free SSL certificate with its services.
They offer super affordable hosting that starts at $2.75/month and comes with a free SSL, free domain for a year, easy WordPress installer, and more.
With over 2 million websites hosted on HostGator, you can say that they really offer a great service.
They offer different hosting services such as shared hosting, WordPress hosting, dedicated hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, and more.
The free SSL certificate comes with all their hosting plans and has a 256-bit encryption level which is the industry standard.
Besides free SSL, here are some of the highlights of using HostGator for your WordPress site:
- Free Domain for 1 Year
- Free Site Migration
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
- One-click WordPress Installer
- Unlimited Storage
Here are the pricing plans of HostGator web hosting:
Their plans start at $2.75/month to $5.25/month for web hosting and include a free SSL in each plan.
3. DreamHost
Next up on our list is DreamHost which offers great web hosting services at affordable costs. Their web hosting is fast, secure, and optimized for performance.
DreamHost offers a free SSL powered by Let’s Encrypt in all their hosting plans. The other perks of using DreamHost include a free domain, easy-to-use control panel, one-click WordPress installer, and more.
What’s even more impressive about DreamHost is that they offer a 97-day money-back guarantee so that you can cancel and refund your plan if your experience isn’t what you expected.
DreamHost also offers a wide range of hosting services such as shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, cloud hosting, and more.
Here’s an overview of the different features you get with DreamHost:
- Free Domain for a Year
- Free SSL
- 1-click WordPress Installer
- Fast SSD Storage
- Free Site Migrations
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- Unlimited Storage
- Free Email Address
- Automated Backups
The pricing plan of their shared hosting is shown below:
The pricing starts at $2.95/month for the 1 website plan and goes up to $3.95 for hosting unlimited sites.
Both the plans in their shared hosting and all other hosting includes a free SSL certificate.
4. GreenGeeks
GreenGreeks is an eco-friendly hosting provider that offers fast and secure web hosting. They offer a free SSL certificate powered by Let’s Encrypt in all their hosting plans.
On top of a free SSL, you also get other benefits such as a free domain for 1 year, free CDN, daily backups, built-in caching, and more.
They use LiteSpeed servers that offer a high performance ensuring your website loads fast for your users. Moreover, pairing it with the free CDN will give a tremendous boost to the site’s performance.
GreenGeeks has a wide range of hosting services which include shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers.
Here is an overview of the features you get with GreenGeeks hosting:
- Free SSL
- Free Domain for 1 year
- Free CDN
- SSD Storage
- 50 Email Accounts
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- Daily Backups
Here is the pricing of the GreenGeeks web hosting plans:
As you can see, the plans start at $2.49/month for a single website and you can host unlimited websites with their Pro and Premium plans.
All plans include a free SSL certificate and are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.
5. Hostinger
Hostinger is a relatively new player in the hosting industry but they offer super fast and affordable hosting services.
With Hostinger, you get a free SSL certificate along with a free domain for a year and a free Cloudflare CDN.
Setting up your WordPress website on Hostinger is very simple as its dashboard interface is very clean and simple. Moreover, they also offer a one-click installer that lets you install WordPress in a blink of an eye.
In terms of hosting services, they offer plenty. Some hosting services include shared hosting, WordPress hosting, cloud hosting, cPanel hosting, dedicated hosting, VPS hosting, and Minecraft hosting.
Here is a quick rundown of the features you get with Hostinger’s web hosting services:
- Free SSL
- Free Domain for 1 year
- Free Cloudflare CDN
- SSD storage
- Limited Bandwidth
- Free Email Account
Let’s take a look at the pricing plans of their shared hosting:
Their plans start at $1.39/month which is super cheap but it’s important to note here that this plan doesn’t include a free domain and limited bandwidth. The premium shared hosting plan comes with a free domain and unlimited bandwidth.
But, all plans come with a free SSL certificate powered by Let’s Encrypt.
6. Kinsta
Kinsta offers all-in-one cloud hosting services with an infrastructure built on Google Cloud’s Premium Tier network and Cloudflare. They deliver out-of-the-box solutions on a fast and highly secure platform for all their clients.
Through their enterprise-level Cloudflare integration, they offer free wildcard SSL, CDN network with 260+ PoPs, HTTP/3 support, DDoS protection, and other powerful features to their users.
With wildcard SSL support, users can secure unlimited numbers of subdomains with a single certificate. It works with any subdomain of the base domain name that is provisioned for those operating multiple subdomains can significantly benefit from this feature.
Here’s an overview of Kinsta’s WordPress hosting features:
- Fast and secure infrastructure built on the Google Cloud Platform
- Enterprise-level Cloudflare integration
- 35+ data center locations and a CDN network with 260+ locations
- Free wildcard SSL
- Custom-built dashboard
- DDoS protection
- Daily backups
- Staging environment with selective push feature
- 24/7/365 support
- Kinsta API
- SOC2 Compliance
Let’s take a look at the pricing of Kinst’a WordPress Hosting plans:
The pricing plan starts at $30 per month (billed annually) with 1 WordPress install.
7. WPX Hosting
WPX Hosting is an award-winning company that offers high-performance web hosting services. They’re popular because of their performance and they appear to back their performance claims based on what their users say about them.
They offer free unlimited SSLs with all their hosting plans along with many other great features such as 1-click installs, unlimited migrations, high-speed custom CDN, and more.
Unlike the other hosting providers we’ve seen in this list, WPX Hosting only offers managed WordPress hosting solutions.
Their managed WordPress hosting runs on LiteSpeed servers powered by a CDN which delivers tremendous performance.
Here are some of the features you get with WPX Hosting:
- Free SSL
- LiteSpeed Server
- High-speed Custom CDN
- Unlimited Site Migrations
- 1-Click WordPress Installations
- 99.95% Uptime Guarantee
- 28-day Automatic Backups
- Free Malware Scanning and Removal
- DDoS Protection
- Email Accounts
Let’s take a look at the pricing plans of WPX Hosting:
Their plans start at $20.83/month and go as high as $83.25/month. All the plans include a free SSL certificate.
8. Cloudways
The last one on this is list is Cloudways that offers exceptional managed cloud hosting solutions. If you’re serious about performance, then Cloudways is the perfect hosting for your WordPress site.
Cloudways makes it very easy to manage your WordPress site. Their dashboard has a very clean interface making it a breeze to install WordPress to your website.
Their hosting comes with a free SSL powered by Let’s Encrypt. This SSL certificate can be installed with a single click in Cloudways.
Besides SSL, you also get so many other features such as:
- Cloudways CDN
- Dedicated Firewalls
- Free Migration
- SSD Storage
- 1-Click Restore & Backup
- 24/7 Real-time Monitoring
Since Cloudways is a managed hosting platform, you can choose the data center where you host your site. The data centers offered by Cloudways are DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, and Google Cloud.
Here are the pricing plans of the Cloudways hosting with DigitalOcean data centers:
The pricing starts at $10/month and goes as high as $80/month if you need more resources. All the plans include a free SSL.
Conclusion
So, these are the best WordPress hosting with free SSL certificates. As you can see from this list, you don’t have to pay a lot to get web hosting with a free SSL.
The pricing is very affordable and perfect for anyone starting a new WordPress site. And if you’re planning to move to a new host, most of the web hosting providers we discussed in this list offer free site migrations.
All in all, these web hosting providers with free SSL are perfect for any use case. Whether you’re starting a blog, a business site, or an eCommerce website, you can count on the hosting providers above.
If you have any questions or doubts regarding the hosting providers listed above, feel free to ask them in the comments section below.
Note: This post contains affiliate links. That means if you make any purchase using any of these links, we will earn a small commission without any extra cost to you.
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