A wildcard SSL certificate differs from other types of certificates because they allow you to secure an unlimited number of subdomains along with your primary domain. This saves you the time and money of having to purchase and manage separate SSL certificates for each subdomain.
These certificates are issued to domains with the wildcard character, represented by an asterisk (*), in their hostname. This character is used to represent an unlimited number of subdomains.
For example, if we wanted to buy a certificate for mywebsite.com, we would have it issued to *.servertastic.com when generating the CSR code. Any subdomains that share the same primary name of “.servertastic.com” would be covered by the certificate. This could include...
- forums.mywebsite.com
- support.mywebsite.com
- blog.mywebsite.com
And we could add as many subdomains to this list as we want, so long as they share the .servertastic.com on the end. Wildcard SSL certificates can only cover first level subdomains. So login.support.mywebsite.com cannot be secured by the wildcard certificate.
Wildcard certificates can be issued as domain validated (DV) certificates, which means they can be issued in a matter of minutes and only require you to prove that you own the domain. You can also choose to get an organisation validated (OV) certificate, where the details of your company will appear in the certificate details. This requires you to go through a vetting process to prove your website is legitimate.
They cannot be issued at extended validation (EV) certificates however. This means you cannot get your company's name in green text in the URL bar.
You can learn more by viewing our range of wildcard certificates.
