Question

Do i need to buy separate SSL certs for www and non-www ?

Posted on May 30, 2017
Ubuntu 16.04 DigitalOcean
Asked by ozwiz

Let’s say I have a website named example.com hosted here in DO. Currently, I am redirecting all www urls to non-www equivalent. So if a request comes at www.example.com the server will redirect it to example.com.

Now I want to use SSL on my site. My question is do I have to buy separate SSL certs for www and non-www version of the domain ?

Thanks :)

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Flamber Hansen • May 30, 2017

Accepted Answer

Hi @ozwiz

Most certificate providers will give you www.example.com for free, when you buy example.com

But you can get free signed certificates with Let’s Encrypt. You can follow the tutorial depending if you’re using as web server. Apache: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-secure-apache-with-let-s-encrypt-on-ubuntu-16-04 Nginx: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-secure-nginx-with-let-s-encrypt-on-ubuntu-16-04

Jane Smith • November 23, 2017

You do not need to buy separate SSL certificates because Now Single domain validation (DV) SSL Certificate will secure the both www and non-www version of the domain name by default.

Generally, most of the well-known Certificate Authorities such as Comodo, RapidSSL, GeoTrust, Thawte, GlobalSign, etc… issue a domain validation SSL certificate along with WWW and NON-WWW support feature.

If you get single DV SSL certificate from such authorities to protect non-www URLs, which is redirected from www URLs, there will be no issue, because if the CSR is generated for www.example.com then it will automatically work for example.com also.

Mouhsen Ibrahim • May 30, 2017

@ozwiz

No you can have SSL certificate for *.example.com or sometimes you might need to specify all the subdomains of your main domain for example you can have one SSL certificate for example.com and for www.example.com.

Hope this helps.