DigiCert SSL Certificate Reviews

Over the years I have used multiple CA's (Verisign, Thawte, GoDaddy, etc...) and one thing has always been constant: They all suck. For my most recent round of renewals I went looking for a better way and I found DigiCert. DigiCert runs their Certificate Authority the way you would want it to be run. They are a small company with a laser focus on issuing certificates. This is a huge advantage over the big megalith that is Verisign/Thawte (now Symmantec) that just cares about the cash they pull in. DigiCert has several tools that are incredibly helpful. From the www.digicert.com/help page that can troubleshoot your cert (even if it is not one of theirs), to the Windows Tool to test and install the proper certificate chain, to the tool on their web page for generating openssl commands that you can execute to generate certs, they really truly get it! I am flat out impressed by the fact that as you go through their enrollment process they have AJAX enabled web pages that parse your CSR as soon as you paste it into the web page as a sanity check. When I have submitted a request to them and then not clicked on the verification link within 10 minutes or so, they have called me on the phone to make sure everything was going smoothly. When you call them on the phone, they answer immediately, and the folks you talk to are combination sales and support folks. They totally understand the product they are selling. So in conclusion, these guys are my new favorite CA. The only one down side about them is that their root cert might not be a 100% widely accepted as others, however, you do have the option to chain it back to an Entrust root cert which has pretty much universal coverage. This does require yet another chained cert though which might slow down browser key exchange I suppose... -Eric