SSL is the technology behind the padlock in the address bar and the s in https. It encrypts traffic between your visitor and your website, so passwords and form data cannot be read in transit. Without SSL browsers show a "not secure" warning and your Google position suffers. A certificate from Let's Encrypt is free and renews automatically; with us it is included in hosting as standard.
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. Strictly speaking we now use its successor TLS, but everyone still calls it SSL. It is the technology that encrypts traffic between your visitor's browser and your server.
Without SSL everything a visitor types travels across the internet as readable text. Someone on the same network, for instance on public wifi, can intercept that traffic. With SSL it is encrypted and an eavesdropper gains nothing.
You recognise it by two things: the address starts with https rather than http, and the browser shows a padlock. When it is missing, Chrome and Safari now label the site "Not secure". For a visitor who does not know you yet, that alone is reason enough to leave.
Google has used https as a ranking factor for years. It does not weigh heavily compared with content, but between two otherwise equal pages the secure one wins. More importantly, many modern browser features do not work without https, including location access and saved credentials.
For most websites, nothing. Let's Encrypt issues free certificates that renew automatically every ninety days. For an ordinary business site or webshop that is exactly what you need.
Paid certificates still exist. They do not offer stronger encryption, but they do come with a warranty and sometimes more thorough validation of your company. For the vast majority of small and medium businesses that is money wasted.
An expired certificate effectively takes your site down: visitors get a full-screen warning that most of them will not click through. Automatic renewal is therefore not a luxury. Our maintenance plan from €49 per month includes monitoring for exactly this.
Yes, as far as encryption goes there is no difference. A free certificate from Let's Encrypt uses the same technology and the same strength as a paid one. The difference lies in the extras: paid certificates come with a warranty and sometimes with more thorough verification of your company details, which can matter for banks and large webshops. For an ordinary business site or a smaller webshop it adds nothing. We use Let's Encrypt as standard, with automatic renewal so a certificate never expires unnoticed.
Browsers show a full-screen warning that the connection is not private, and most visitors will not click past it. Your site is technically still reachable but practically unusable, which costs you enquiries and revenue immediately. Let's Encrypt certificates are valid for ninety days and therefore need regular renewal; that should be fully automatic. We monitor it actively, so an expired certificate never becomes a silent outage you discover only when a customer calls.
Yes. Even without payments your site transmits data: every contact form carries a name, an email address and often a phone number. Those are personal data and they belong encrypted, also from a GDPR perspective. On top of that, browsers visibly mark every site without https as not secure, regardless of what you offer. For a visitor who does not know you yet, that is often reason enough to click back to the search results. Since it is free, there is no reason not to have it.