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You can get free SSL certs through http://www.startssl.com/. Granted, their website is _horrendous_ to navigate. Also, the certs are encryption only - no real identity verification - so they won't light up your address bar blue or green.

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While they are great for hobby projects and personal sites there are some differences. For example, they are not for commercial use: "Class 1 certificates are limited to client and server certificates, whereas the later is restricted in its usage for non-commercial purpose only." via https://www.startssl.com/policy.pdf

If you pay for the class 2 cert from startssl, they do an identity verification. Startssl's, paid cert is still cheaper than this getssl's $70 cert.

You don't pay for class 2 certs from startssl. You pay for class 2 validation. After validation you can generate an unlimited number of class 2 certs at no cost including wildcard certs. Validation is cheaper than a single premium cert from getssl.

Startssl does charge per cert for EV certs. The first cert is $199.90 and subsequent are $49.90. A bargain compared to most ssl cert providers.

StartSSL also lets you use subjectAltName to have multiple domains on one cert so that you can host multiple domains off of a single IP.

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