Sectigo (formerly Comodo CA, rebranded 2018) is one of the most widely-issued commercial CA roots on the internet, with strong native browser compatibility and one of the broadest cert portfolios available. The PositiveSSL/EssentialSSL/InstantSSL legacy product lines are particularly popular for hosters and agencies serving SMB customers — solid trust signals at competitive pricing.
Domain Validation (DV) — fastest path to HTTPS
The CA verifies only that you control the domain (via DNS TXT, file upload, or email challenge). No business identity verification, no organisational documents required. Issuance is fully automated and typically completes in minutes.
DV certificates encrypt traffic identically to OV/EV certs and trigger the padlock icon in every browser. The difference is the level of information published in the certificate's Subject field: DV shows only the domain name, not company name or registered address.
Pick DV when: you need HTTPS for personal sites, dev/staging environments, SaaS apps where users authenticate before seeing data, API endpoints, internal tools, or any case where the padlock is the trust signal that matters and an organisation seal is not required.
Single Domain coverage
Secures one fully-qualified domain (FQDN), with the www. and apex variants both covered as a convention (example.com + www.example.com share one cert). Other subdomains (e.g. app.example.com, api.example.com) require their own certificates.
The simplest and most common coverage type. Choose Single Domain when you have one canonical site, or when the additional subdomains you operate are best served by their own scoped certificates rather than a shared wildcard.
Certificate details
- Annual price — $8.16 USD
- Warranty — $10k (insurance coverage backed by the CA in case of misissuance)
- Issuance time — minutes (automated)
- Domains covered — up to 1
- Validity — 1 year (annual renewal)
- Reissue — free unlimited reissues during the validity period
- Refund — 30-day money-back guarantee on most certificate types
