Network Solutions Wildcard SSL Certificate

Posted February 22, 2010 * Comments(1)

If you’re thinking of buying a Wildcard SSL Certificate from Network Solutions, beware it will not be valid for the base domain.

Your $400 SSL Certificate will cover

https://www.example.com
https://abc.example.com
https://whatever.example.com

But it will not cover

https://example.com

If you want SSL on example.com, you will have to buy ANOTHER SSL Certificate ($150).
I couldn’t find this fact mentioned anywhere on the Network Solutions website.
I had to call their 800 number to get an answer.

Note that some registrars do cover the base domain with their Wildcard SSL Certificates (like GoDaddy).

Not all SSL Certificates are created equal.

1 Comment so far

  1. Brady J. Frey on January 7th, 2011

    Just wanted to say, thank you for this notice. I installed a wildcard yesterday and was surprised to see security notifications still popping up. Investigating and Googling confirmed your comment above; Network Solutions has a ‘non-standard’ definition for what would define a Wildcard DNS. Your result popped up first, and saved me a lot of hassle- I’ve been working with twitter.com/netsolcares to find a solution for the misinformation… if anything, an article on their support site, but something disclosed on their sales site would be best.

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