This update goes beyond adding it to its list of ranking factors only. It fundamentally changes the way web users think about their online security.

SSL certificates are designed to make users feel secure while using the internet. Without them, you could be jeopardizing your business, as well as your customer’s sensitive data.

What is an SSL Certificate?

Put simply, an SSL certificate is a text file with encrypted data that you install on your server. This allows you to secure/encrypt sensitive information and communications between your website and your audience. Many think of it as their electronic passport.

SSL stands for ‘Secure Sockets Layer,’ and when a website owner has one, all data passed between web browsers and servers remains private and encrypted.

Without valid certificates, websites cannot establish a secure connection with web servers, meaning that users will not be digitally connected to a cryptographic key. This puts your company’s and your customers’ information at risk, especially considering current cyber crime trends. As a result, the lack of SSL and HTTPS could potentially damage your brand image.

People will avoid purchasing from you or even signing up to your newsletter through fear of having their details stolen. Your conversions will plummet.

One of the most important things in business is to make customers feel like they are visiting a trusted, reliable website where making purchases is safe. SSL establishes a secure connection which then reassures your visitors using visual cues.

Seeing the lock icon or green bar when visiting a site can automatically make a visitor trust your company and take the next step in making a purchase.

SSL Certificates are no longer optional with Google

Purchasing and installing SSL is no longer something that online business owners can ignore. Google chrome is set to mark sites as insecure if they do not follow the steps above.

Sites without secure connection will be labeled as ‘Not Secure,’ and perhaps even blacklisted. Those all-important visual cues will not be in a surfer’s address bar to reassure visitors to your site, and you will likely lose them because of this.

Without an up-to-date, validated SSL certificate, you can only damage your position in Googlesearch results. However, there is more to it than making the search engine like you. Without a secured connection, you are putting your whole business and brand reputation at risk.

SSL Solution

Taking advantage of CountryTyme’s Free SSL is easy. Enabling (or forcing) the SSL will give your domain an “HTTPS://” prefix, which ensures your website will be labeled as “secure” in most web browsers.

The Free SSL lasts for 90 days from issuance and renews automatically at no cost to you so your site hosted with CountryTyme should never be without an SSL.

If you do have an existing paid SSL certificate installed it will not be affected and will remain active. Any expired paid SSL certificate will automatically convert to the Free SSL if the domain has not opted-out.

The most confusing aspect for some new clients is the difference between a domain registration and web hosting. The two are interwoven (you generally don’t have a website unless you have a domain name). Every home needs an address. Your address is the domain name you have registered. The home is your website, residing at the web host of your choice.

CountryTyme Hosting sells both services but we do not require clients to use both. Some will register their domain through us and have their web hosting elsewhere. Others will have web hosting with CountryTyme and register their domain(s) elsewhere. The simplest thing is to purchase both services from us.

What is a Domain Registration?

A domain registration is a “right to use and control” a domain name. It is not related to any content or services associated with that domain. Domain registrations are quite simple. They are valid for a period of one year or more. Domain names usually have contact information associated with them, and may have some DNS (name servers) servers too.

Our domain registration service includes (optional) web hosting services such as forwarding web requests to an existing website and/or forwarding e-mail for the domain to an existing mailbox somewhere else. We also offer a low-cost domain parking service, which includes a placeholder (coming soon page) for your website and one email address.

What is Web Hosting?

Web Hosting is a service. It is the home for your website. CountryTyme Hosting configures the web servers to handle web pages and the email for your domain name. Your email can be retrieved by our Webmail system, or an email client on a home or business computer like Outlook, Thunderbird or Eudora.

Overselling, simply, is selling more of a product or service than what you have currently available (commonly in web hosting: bandwidth and disk space). The practice of overselling isn’t the real problem – managing the overselling is the problem. It’s a matter of overselling vs. overloading (overloading). There are bottlenecks when it comes to a server’s performance, but those bottlenecks aren’t related to the bandwidth available or the amount of disk space.

Is Overselling bad practice?

A web host can oversell as most users won’t ever come close to the disk space limit they are set. Overselling occurs with many web hosts. Overselling in and of itself has no affect on server performance. That’s because it is a marketing term and not a technical term. With good server management overselling can lead to an efficient use of resources. A web host that houses too many accounts and websites on the server without monitoring disk space and bandwidth usage may in fact be overloading the server.

When it leads to Overloading

Overloading the server can cause poor performance, MySQL crashes, slow websites, and even the whole server to crash. Offering insane “reseller plans” can cause the server to spiral out of control. It now becomes impossible to manage the hardware. There is no way to cap usage or to specify server density/population.

If you are just starting to look for web hosting or looking to move to a new web host then you will most likely come across many mind blowing web hosting packages with unlimited web hosting tagged to it.

Understanding how real those unlimited web hosting claims are will help you make the right decision in choosing the best host for your website, shopping cart or blog.

The concept of unlimited web hosting has gained large popularity due to the intense competition in the web hosting industry, fueling such extreme claims. It appears that an unlimited web hosting package is inevitable in any standard web hosting package, especially when it comes to shared web hosting.

Although you may see a large list of unlimited plans and features in almost all shared web hosting plans, this will not be as true as it looks. Things are not always as they appear.
When you look into the terms of service part of such unlimited web hosting providers, the fine print clearly highlights the direct or indirect limitations of such claims. Obviously, no web hosting provider can really claim a 100% unlimited web hosting plan since, it is not practically possible and they will have some sort of back door conditions to restrict you from using their resources beyond a point.

Why do web hosting providers offer unlimited packages?

The next obvious question is “Why do web hosting providers offer unlimited hosting packages and features?” – The main reason is because in reality, most web hosting users, on average, use only a very limited resource. This limit usually falls within the comfort zone of most web hosting providers.

Only a very small percentage of web hosting users clock in for higher web hosting resource requirements. When this happens, most of them are automatically moved to the next level of web hosting such as Reseller Hosting, VPS, Cloud Hosting or Dedicated Hosting. This allows Web Hosting Providers who claim unlimited resources an easy escape.

By advertising unlimited web hosting packages and features, most of these Web Hosting Providers mean that, as and when the need for a web hosting user increases on account of genuine reasons the resources will be increased accordingly. And this holds good only for genuine users who does not cross the limit by misusing the allocated web hosting resources.

Every web hosting provider needs to have some sort of restriction, either directly or indirectly, since they can’t keep spending unlimited money on unlimited resources for a fixed cost of a web hosting package.

When you want to pick a right web host, it is important that you don’t fall prey to the large list of unlimited feature claims. In most cases, you may need only very limited resources. In the event of your growing needs, you will most probably be asked to move to higher web hosting option such as a VPS, Cloud hosting or Dedicated hosting on accounts of speed and performance.

So when you are seriously researching a long term web hosting provider for your online venture, you should look beyond those fancy, unlimited web hosting claims.