Sectigo Essential Wildcard SSL

What are Multi-Year SSL Subscription Plans?

Starting with August 19th, 2020, the maximum duration of publicly-trusted SSL/TLS certificates issued by all Certificate Authorities (CAs) has been set to a maximum of 13 months.

However, in order to make your SSL Management process time-saving and cost-effective, the CAs and SSL Dragon are offering you the 2 Year and 3 Year SSL Subscription Plans.

This means that you can still buy a 2 or 3 year SSL Certificate and continue to benefit from multi-year discounting, while still remaining compliant with the CAB Forum SSL requirements.

How the Multi-Year SSL works?

Due to security reasons, your SSL certificate is initially issued with a maximum 1-year validity.

30 days before the expiration of your certificate, SSL Dragon, on behalf of the CA, will notify you and ask you to reissue your SSL, in order to get the additional (replacement) 1-year certificate, according to your Subscription Plan.

This FAQ explains to you how to reissue your SSL Certificate, step by step.

You will need to validate & install the replacement SSL:

a. If you have a Domain Validation SSL Certificate, a short verification of your domain name will be required via Email, HTTP, or DNS in order to issue the 1-yr replacement SSL.

b. If you have a Business or Extended SSL Certificate – an additional Business Validation/Extended Validation recheck and callback process will also be required.

You can still reissue your certificate at any time and as many times as you like during your Multi-Year SSL Subscription Plan.

On your SSL Certificate’s page within the SSL Dragon account, you will find all the details regarding your Subscription Plan:

• Valid From – Shows the date when your SSL was issued and became active
• Expires – Shows the date when your SSL expires and needs to be reissued (not Renewed).
• Subscription Starts – The date when the first SSL was issued and the subscription period activated
• Subscription Ends – The date when the subscription ends and SSL needs to be Renewed (not Reissued)
• Next Reissue – shows the number of days left of your SSL. The Certificate should be reissued 30-days prior to this date.

The Domain Validation (DV) SSL certificate is the most affordable choice for increasing the security of your blog, personal or small business website. Since there is no required paperwork, the process of acquiring the Domain Validation certificate is very quick and easy: you will have to prove that you are the domain owner just by responding to an automatic e-mail message. After a couple of minutes, you will receive the issued SSL certificate which can be installed immediately. Sites with Domain Validation certification can be identified by the padlock that is displayed by most web browsers.

This type of SSL certificates is recommended to be used if you need to prove that your site is secured, by having a secured connection. The Domain Validation certificates don’t display the legal entity, as the identity of the website owner is not checked while issuing them. So, if you have an e-commerce website or a site that collects users’ personal data, you should consider buying our Business Validation (BV) or Extended Validation (EV) certificates, which will make your site more trustworthy.

When requesting an SSL Certificate you have to prove that you own or you have management rights over the domain or sub-domain that you are requesting an SSL Certificate for.

Important! As of June 16, 2021, Sectigo no longer accepts WHOIS-based email addresses for Domain Control Validation (DCV).

STEP 1: Domain Validation (DV)

A. EMAIL

If you have an SSL Certificate issued by Sectigo, GoGetSSL, GeoTrust, Thawte, DigiCert, and RapidSSL, then you can complete the domain validation is by responding to an automated domain validation message sent to your email address. You will be given a list of emails to choose from, and the automated domain validation message will be sent to the email address that you choose.

Always check your email address (including your Spam folder) so as you should receive an email message from the Certificate Authority with instructions on how to validate (prove the ownership of) your domain name. The email message will ask you to copy a unique code and paste it on a specific link provided in the same email message.

Important: Only 5 e-mail addresses are allowed for domain validation: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]
In some cases, the Certificate Authority may allow your administrative e-mail from WHOIS, too, but ONLY IF the Private registration is disabled.

B. HTTP / HTTPS method

This method is Not Available for Wildcard SSL Certificates.

The HTTP validation consists of uploading a TXT validation file to a pre-defined location on your website. You have to make sure that you can access this file and link from any web browser. Once you proceed with this domain validation method, the CA will run a scan of your website and will look particularly for this file at the given link. Your SSL Certificate will pass the domain validation within a few minutes after the CA’s crawler system finds the TXT file on your website.

The HTTPS validation method is the same validation method as described above. You should choose the HTTPS option if you already have an SSL Certificate installed on your website.

C. DNS method

You can also add a pre-defined domain record to your domain registrar (the website where you registered your domain name). Make sure that your firewall doesn’t block the CA’s validation robot.

Sectigo and GoGetSSL require CNAME DNS type, which looks like:

_b2013ea8353c9760c0221c49dc3e8ca7.yourwebsite.com CNAME
165b83449f4fdf83021de4e6f6ee795a.4ae75dbefe3r7bb8a1878616d8b5ae4.5r4r46855d28f6903.comodoca.com

while DigiCert (Thawte, GeoTrust, RapidSSL) require TXT DNS type, which looks like:

yourwebsite.com TXT “w34f54t4t45t354eer98rn4jf4449nfrf”

or

dnsauth.yourwebsite.com TXT “w34f54t4t45t354eer98rn4jf4449nfrf”

Please note that newly added DNS records take between 10-48 minutes to propagate. This means that you will have to wait up to 48 hours to pass the domain validation if you go with this method. That is why we recommend the Email, HTTP, and HTTPS methods better because they would allow you to pass the domain validation instantly.

STEP 2: CAA Check

As of 8th September 2017, all Certificate Authorities (CAs) are obliged to respect your CAA policy, as a security measure.

The CAA record should allow the CA to issue the SSL for your domain name, otherwise, the order would be set as Pending until you update the record.

By default, if no CAA record found, any CA may issue SSL for your domain name. Otherwise, you should update your CAA record.

Here is how to do it:
– https://support.sectigo.com/Com_KnowledgeDetailPage?Id=kA01N000000zFMO
– https://docs.digicert.com/manage-certificates/dns-caa-resource-record-check/

Here is how to test the record:
– https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/dig/#CAA/
– https://caatest.co.uk/scan.org.ua

Optional (Rare) – Brand Validation (Manual Check)

In some cases, the CAs may require manual verification if your order fails any internal rules of Brand Validation.

It takes around 24-48 hours to pass this manual check, and the CA will either issue or reject an order in such cases.

Here are the reasons why your order is under Brand Validation.

How to change the domain validation method?

If you chose one of these domain validation methods described above, and you see that your domain doesn’t get validated, then you can always change your domain validation method. Please go to this link to learn how to do that.

In order to buy a Domain Validated certificate, you do not need to provide any documentation. You will have to confirm the domain ownership through a simple email, DNS record, or file-based authentication (except wildcard SSL certificates). Following completion of one of these elements, the DV certificate will be signed and released to you.

A Wildcard SSL Certificate is specifically created to allow users to secure one single domain name and all its sub-domains. In other words, you can secure one single domain name and an unlimited number of sub-domains belonging to that domain name with one single Wildcard SSL Certificate.

You can add sub-domains to your server and they will be covered by your Wildcard SSL Certificate automatically. You do not need to re-issue your Wildcard SSL Certificate each and every time when you add sub-domains to it. The newly added sub-domains will be automatically covered by your Wildcard SSL Certificate.

NOTE: The subdomains that you can secure with one Wildcard SSL Certificate have to be either 1st level sub-domains (e.g.: *.example.com) or 2nd level sub-domains (*.mob.example.com). You cannot secure 1st and 2nd level sub-domains with one regular Wildcard SSL Certificate.  If you want to secure 1st level sub-domains and 2nd level sub-domains, you have to get a Multi-Domain Wildcard SSL Certificate or 2 separate Wildcard SSL Certificates.

For example, a regular Wildcard SSL Certificate allows you to secure:

1. One main domain name (example.com) and all its 1st level subdomains (*.example.com):
   1. my.example.com
   2. test.example.com
   3. dev.example.com
   4. mail.example.com
   5. (etc)
2. Or, one subdomain (mob.example.com) and all 2nd level sub-domains (*.mob.example.com):
   1. my.mob.example.com
   2. test.mob.example.com
   3. dev.mob.example.com
   4. mail.mob.example.com
   5. (etc)

In order to secure one domain and all its sub-domains as shown in the first example, you have to include *.example.com as a common name (domain name) when creating a CSR (Certificate Signing Request). If you want to secure 2nd level sub-domains, then you have to enter *.mob.example.com as a common name (domain name) when creating a CSR (Certificate Signing Request).

The subdomains that you can secure with one Wildcard SSL Certificate have to be either 1st level sub-domains (e.g.: *.example.com) or 2nd level sub-domains (*.mob.example.com). You cannot secure 1st and 2nd level sub-domains with one regular Wildcard SSL Certificate.

If you want to secure 1st level sub-domains and 2nd level sub-domains, you have to get a Multi-Domain Wildcard SSL Certificate, or 2 separate Wildcard SSL Certificates.

For example, a regular Wildcard SSL Certificate allows you to secure:

1. One main domain name (example.com) and all its 1st level sub-domains (*.example.com):
   1. my.example.com
   2. test.example.com
   3. dev.example.com
   4. mail.example.com
   5. (etc)
2. Or, one sub-domain (mob.example.com) and all 2nd level sub-domains (*.mob.example.com):
   1. my.mob.example.com
   2. test.mob.example.com
   3. dev.mob.example.com
   4. mail.mob.example.com
   5. (etc)

In order to secure one domain and all its sub-domains as shown in the first example, you have to include *.example.com as a common name (domain name) when creating a CSR (Certificate Signing Request). If you want to secure 2nd level sub-domains, then you have to enter *.mob.example.com as a common name (domain name) when creating a CSR (Certificate Signing Request).

You can add sub-domains to your server and they will be covered by your Wildcard SSL Certificate automatically. You do not need to re-issue your Wildcard SSL Certificate each and every time when you add sub-domains to it. The newly added sub-domains will be automatically covered by your Wildcard SSL Certificate.

There are many different ways to install an SSL Certificate, and they all depend on your SSL Certificate brand, the webserver type, the operating system on your server, and the web hosting panel that you have on your server.

These being said, please check our Installation Articles to get detailed instructions on how to install your SSL Certificate on about 44 different server types, hosting panels, and operating systems.

Also, here are links to documentation on how to install your SSL Certificate on your server, based on the SSL Certificate brand that you have:
– Sectigo
– Thawte/RapidSSL/GeoTrust/DigiCert
– GoGetSSL

We always recommend you get specialized help with your SSL Certificate installation. If you have a web developer or a system engineer, then they would be the right people to help you with your SSL Certificate installation.