Why we include free SSL on every plan (and some hosts still don't)

If you ever get an invoice from a hosting company with a line item for an “SSL certificate”, something is wrong. Let me explain.

The short history

Until about 2015, SSL certificates cost money. You’d pay £30-£200 a year per domain, depending on how much trust-theatre you wanted.

Then Let’s Encrypt launched, and Cloudflare put free SSL on their free tier, and the world changed. Getting a valid certificate for any domain became a 30-second automated process. The marginal cost is roughly zero.

A decade later, the technology hasn’t changed, but some hosts still charge for it. That’s not a cost they’re passing on to you; it’s a margin they’re adding for nostalgia’s sake.

What you get at Cam Cloud

Every site on every plan, including our cheapest tier:

• Automatic SSL certificate on the root domain and www subdomain
• Automatic renewal every 90 days (Let’s Encrypt) or rolling for 10+ years (Cloudflare)
• Automatic HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect
• Modern cipher suites, TLS 1.3, HSTS enabled by default
• Zero manual work from you, ever

If you add a new subdomain to a site we host, the SSL for it appears automatically, usually within a minute. You don’t have to ask. You don’t have to notice.

When you’d actually pay for an SSL certificate

There are three legitimate reasons to still pay for an SSL certificate:

1. Extended Validation (EV). The green bar that used to show the company name. Browsers have largely stopped displaying it prominently, so the value has collapsed. We don’t recommend it for anyone we host.
2. A wildcard from a specific authority, if you have a reason to trust DigiCert over Let’s Encrypt. Enterprise edge case.
3. A code-signing certificate. Different product; not for websites.

None of those apply to a typical small-business site. If someone is selling you an SSL certificate for your company’s brochure site in 2026, you can politely decline.

What this means for your bill

Two things. First: a Cam Cloud plan with free SSL and a competitor’s plan that charges £30/yr for SSL are already £30/yr different, before we even discuss the service. Second: it’s a small but reliable signal of whether your current host is paying attention. A host charging for SSL in 2026 is a host running on last decade’s assumptions. It’s worth looking at what else they’re still doing that way.