Different vendors provide different types of certificates with different levels of security and insurance. Most vendors offer very similar features, the basic differences are listed below.
1. EV Certificate – Extended Validation certificate, or some times called green bar certificate provides will most often have additional business level checks to verify the company. When an EV certificate is used many browser will display the browser search bar in a green color providing an additional level of confidence to the end user, knowing the company was more thoroughly validate. EV certificates often carry a higher level of insurance against fraud.
2. Standard Certificate – A standard certificate usually provides 128 – 256 bit encryption. The certificate authority verifies the company but not at the same level as an EV certificate.
3. Wildcard Certificate – A Wildcard certificate allows a server to secure multiple sub domains on one or more servers. A subdomain is only considered the portion up till the next period in a domain. Examples are example.simplespider.com and test.simplespider.com can both use the same wild card domain, but us.example.simplespider.com can not use the same subdomain certificate because of the multiple periods before the domain name.
4. Multi Domain Certificates – A multiple domain certificate allows a single certificate to cover multiple domains. Each domain is listed in the aliases of the certificate information.
