An SSL certificate does two things. It encrypts the connection between your visitor and your server, and it proves the server answering is genuinely the one your domain points at.
That is it. Everything else sold alongside it is packaging.
Free Certificates Are Not Inferior
Let's Encrypt issues certificates free, automatically, and they provide exactly the same encryption as a certificate costing two hundred pounds a year. The padlock looks the same. The security is the same. Browsers treat them identically.
The paid tiers differ in how much identity checking happens before issue, and in warranties that are close to impossible to claim against. For a small business website, a free certificate is the correct choice and there is no catch.
The Part That Actually Goes Wrong
Renewal. Certificates expire. Free ones every ninety days. If renewal is automated and monitored, you will never think about it. If it is automated and not monitored, it will fail silently at some point and the first you hear is a customer saying your site says "not secure".
We learned this properly. We now check the certificate actually being served over a live connection rather than trusting the file on disk, because those two can disagree. A certificate can renew perfectly on disk and never reach the running web server.
What To Check On Your Own Site
Click the padlock in your browser and look at the expiry date. If it is more than thirty days away, renewal is working. If it is closer than that and nothing has renewed it, something is stuck.
Also check that the plain http version of your site redirects to https. A certificate that exists but is not enforced leaves visitors on the unencrypted version without knowing.
If your host charges for SSL in 2026, that is worth questioning. It has been free and automatic for years.
