Thawte is one of the oldest CA brands in the industry (founded 1995 in South Africa, acquired through VeriSign → Symantec → DigiCert). The Thawte trust seal is recognised in business-to-business contexts as a long-standing mark of identity verification, particularly for international e-commerce and SaaS where buyer trust signals carry weight.
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.
Wildcard coverage
Secures a base domain and all first-level subdomains under a single certificate (example.com + *.example.com). One cert covers app.example.com, api.example.com, staging.example.com, and any other first-level subdomain you create — present or future, no re-issue needed.
The right choice when you operate multi-tenant SaaS with customer subdomains (.app.example.com), microservices on subdomains, or any architecture where new subdomains are routine. Note that wildcards cover only one level — .example.com does NOT cover .app.example.com. For multi-level wildcards or arbitrary domain combinations, a Multi-Domain (SAN) certificate is the right fit.
Certificate details
- Annual price — $596.52 USD
- Warranty — $500k (insurance coverage backed by the CA in case of misissuance)
- Issuance time — minutes (automated)
- Domains covered — 1 base + unlimited subdomains (*.example.com)
- Validity — 1 year (annual renewal)
- Reissue — free unlimited reissues during the validity period
- Refund — 30-day money-back guarantee on most certificate types
