4.2. Getting Your Own Secure Server Certificate

There are several steps involved in obtaining your own secure server certificate.  It involves you, ivycom.com and either of the two certificate issuing companies - VeriSign and Thawte. 

One of the reasons why our customers opt to obtain their own certificate is mainly for marketing reasons.  Having your own certificate gives your online business higher level of credibility that often translate into to higher sales volume. 

VeriSign vs. Thawte.
From a practical standpoint, there is not much difference between the two companies except in pricing.  VeriSign is $349/year and Thawte is $129/year.  VeriSign is a more established brand of the two.

Steps to Obtaining Your Own Certificate:

Step 1. CSR Generation by ivycom.com

Please send the following information to support@ivycom.com   There is one time setup fee of $59.95 from us to generate the CSR for you.

Here is a sample CSR request from an imaginary customer whose domain name if foobar.com:

Step 2.  Within 24 hours, our support team will email you the newly created CSR.  Once you receive your CSR, you can choose to go to either VeriSign or Thawte.  Here are the URLs:

VeriSign: http://www.verisign.com/server/prd/s/sbun.html
Thawte: http://www.thawte.com/certs/server/request.html

When asked about the server platform, please choose Apache Secure Server.

Step 3.  Once you receive the notification from the issuing authority that your secure server certificate has been generated, please contact our support team at support@ivycom.com   We will then install your secure server for you within 24 hours.

Expect 10 days for the whole process.