A Certificate Authority, or CA for short is a third-party organization that is trusted by the CA membership programs of different electronic devices, operating systems, and browsers. A CA must adhere to the criteria of each membership program to become a trusted authority.
What is Certificate Authority?
After a CA signs and issues a certificate, that certificate can be used for establishing communication, or other tasks. If a certificate is issued for SSL, that certificate cannot be used for Secure Email. CA also verifies the owner of the certificate and checks if the certificate and revocation status is valid.
SSL certificates activated at 1Byte are issued by SSL.com, a publicly trusted Certificate Authority with 99.9% browser support. If you activated a certificate with us before August 18, 2026, it was issued by Sectigo (formerly Comodo) and remains fully valid for its entire term. Read the full announcement about our change of Certificate Authority →
How Many Types of SSL Validation?
Before going into details, we need to know what “Validation Level” is? Validation level refers to the extent of checks that a Certificate Authority does to verify the identity of a person or organization that owns a website.
The type of validation you decide to go for will be dependent on the size and scope of your website, as well as the kind of data you will be requesting from your users and/or customers. The three main types of SSL validation are:
- Domain Validated Certificates (DV SSL)
- Organization Validated Certificates (OV SSL)
- Extended Validated Certificates (EV SSL)
Let’s take a look at how each type is validated, how you can recognize it in your web browser, and each of its pros and cons.
| DV SSL | OV SSL | EV SSL | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Validation level | Lowest | Medium | Highest |
| Trust level | Lowest | Medium | Highest |
| Issue time | In minutes | 1 – 3 business days | Several business days, depending on how quickly your documentation can be verified |
| Vetting procedure | Email, or sometimes file-based authentication, and the entire process is automated | The CA verifies domain control, then checks the organization’s details against official business registries and third-party records | The CA verifies domain control, the organization’s legal, physical and operational existence, and confirms the request with a verified company representative |
| Detail level of information | Displays little info about website ownership | Displays more info about the company that owns the domain | Displays full info about the company that owns the domain |
| Features | HTTPS and padlock symbol | HTTPS and padlock symbol | HTTPS and padlock symbol |
| Entity | Personal sites (blogs, portfolio sites) | Small and medium businesses, enterprises (e-commerce sites) | Medium and large businesses, enterprises (banking, trading sites) |
Besides that, there are also Self-signed certificates. A self-signed certificate is a digital certificate not signed by any publicly trusted Certificate Authority (CA). Self-signed certificates include SSL/TLS certificates, code signing certificates, and S/MIME certificates. Self-Signed certificates are created, issued, and signed by the organization responsible for the website or the signed software.
How Do I Get an SSL Certificate?
Use ICANN Lookup to validate the information on your website.
The Certificate Signing Request should be created (CSR).
To verify your domain, send your CSR to the Certificate authority.
The certificate should be installed on your website.
One thing to check first: CAA records. Most domains have no CAA records at all, and if yours doesn’t, you can skip this — with no CAA records in place, any Certificate Authority is permitted to issue for your domain. But if your domain already has CAA records naming a specific Certificate Authority, you need to add records for SSL.com before requesting your certificate, or issuance will fail:
example.com. IN CAA 0 issue "ssl.com"
example.com. IN CAA 0 issuewild "ssl.com"
Replace example.com with your own domain. The issue record permits SSL.com to issue standard certificates for your domain; the issuewild record permits it to issue wildcard certificates.
How Many Types of SSL Certificates?
1. Single Domain SSL Certificate
Aka Standard SSL Certificate will protect one domain name only. For example, if you buy an SSL Certificate with the hostname in the common name field as www.example.com site, it will not protect the subdomains of your main domain. This rule applies to all types of SSL validation. When you list your hostname in the common name field as “example.com” the certificate will protect your www.example.com.
If you want to secure ONE website with SSL Certificate then the Single Domain SSL or Standard SSL Certificates are the best options for your online business security needs. Standard SSL Certificates are the cheapest price compared to other SSL Certificates types.
At 1Byte, single-domain certificates are available as Standard SSL (DV), High Assurance SSL (OV), and EV SSL (EV).
2. Wildcard SSL certificates
Wildcard SSL certificate works the same as a Single-Domain SSL certificate, that is applied to a domain and all its subdomains. For example, if you have an SSL certificate for “example.com”, any subdomains you add, such as “mail.example.com” or “login.example.com” will automatically be secured. Even if you don’t have any subdomains currently, if you plan on adding any in the future, a wildcard SSL cert will save you money and hassle as you won’t need to keep on buying individual SSL certs every time you do so. Wildcard SSL certificates can be issued with DV and OV levels of validation, but not EV.
At 1Byte, wildcard certificates are available as Standard Wildcard SSL (DV) and OV Wildcard SSL (OV).
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3. Multi-domain SSL certificates
With a multi-domain SSL certificate, up to 100 different domains are protected. Wildcard domains can also be protected with a multi-domain SSL cert. This kind of SSL cert is ideal for organizations running multiple websites, as they only have to deal with a unified cert for all of them, rather than keeping track of individual certs for each one. Getting this kind of cert will also save money in the long run.
At 1Byte, multi-domain certificates include 3 domains as standard and can be extended up to 100 in total. They are available as SAN Certificate SSL (DV), OV Multi-domain SSL (OV), and EV Multi-domain SSL (EV).