You can say, "I can just get more SSL certificates, right?" but that will cost you several hundreds of dollars even for just a few additional SSL certificates. Wildcard certificates are the answer. They allow you to use just one SSL certificate on an unlimited number of subdomains.

Wildcard? What's that?

Before talking about the wildcard certificate, we should first talk about wildcards. A wildcard is usually represented by an asterisk (*). In computer terms, it's a symbol that stands for substitution by any other string or character. To put it simply, an asterisk symbolcould mean any word. For example, by writing *.bigbusiness dot com, we represent all possible subdomains of bigbusiness dot com like shop.bigbusiness dot com, users.bigbusiness dot com, mail.bigbusiness dot com, etc.

Common Name is the term used to refer to the domain name that will use the SSL certificate. In wildcard certificates, the Common Name field contains a single wildcard, like *.example dot com. Remember this because, you will be required to enter the Common Name if you choose to go for a wildcard certificate.

Benefits to Wildcard Certificates

Purchasing just one wildcard certificate for all your subdomains will obviously save you a lot of money. The average prive for a typical SSL certificate is $150. That may be fine for people with a few subdomains needing SSL, but once you need it for five subdomains, you'll be spending $750. Think about how much money you can save if, let's say, you own a website with 10 subdomains needing SSL security. That's already $1,500. Comparing that to wildcard certificates that only cost $600 each, you save $900. Big companies will sometimes need SSL security on up to 30 subdomains.

Wildcard certificates are good for another reason, and that's manageability. It's not easy to purchase, set up, and then renew annually a number of SSL certificates. It's an extremely error-prone task for a single person to manage so many SSL certificates all at once. All the time and effort that you put into fixing errors will cost you money. Compare all of that hassle to having to worry about just one wildcard certificate. A single certificate is much easier to manage than a dozen. It's easier to minimize errors.

Are There Any Drawbacks?

Wildcard certificates aren't perfect, though. There are some drawbacks. The first thing that experts will point out is problems with security. By using one wildcard certificate, all servers hosting all subdomains share the same private decryption key. If just one server becomes compromised and loses its decryption key to a hacker or fraudster, all the other other subdomain servers also become compromised.

What if the wildcard certificate gets revoked? All subdomains that use the certificate will cease to function properly. Until you fix the wildcard certificate or get individual SSL certificates for each subdomain, you may have to put your website on down time.

Also, wildcard certificates do not work with Extended Verification (EV). Certificate providers must follow the rules that EV sets forth when they approve applications. EV was invented to increase public confidence in SSL. Wildcards in the Common Name are not allowed by EV guidelines. Also note that you won't get the green address bar feature with wildcard certificates, since it only works with EV certificates.

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