By Philbert Shih, theWHIR.com
October 19, 2005 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — SSL certificates, an integral part of any secure transaction over the Web, have become one of the most important value-added services Web hosts can offer. While VeriSign (verisign.com) and GeoTrust (geotrust.com) own the largest market shares and supply hosts directly or though wholesalers such as Tucows (tucows.com) and Alabanza (alabanza.com), several other smaller vendors are trying to corner their own pieces of the pie.
In business since 2001, Texas-based XRamp (xramp.com) has been making its own push into the digital certificate space, announcing last week that it had secured deals to provide SSL certificates to Web hosts CrystalTech (crystaltech.com) and HostMySite (hostmysite.com). The deals come as XRamp reports a 260 percent increase in revenue for the third quarter.
Earlier this year, XRamp became the first company to offer 256-bit SSL certificates, incredibly strong encryption, even compared to 128-bit encryption – the prevailing industry standard. The technology is so secure that most observers agree existing technology would not be able break it, at least for the foreseeable future.
In addition to 256-bit encryption, XRamp offers Class 3 certificates. The company says a Class 3 certificate goes beyond validating domain information, as a Class 2 certificate does, offering full verification of an organization after following through on a strict validation procedure.”We make sure the company that is trying to get the certificate is in fact who they say they are,” says Scott Harris, president and CEO of XRamp. The company gives a $100,000 guarantee in the event of fraud and a 30-day money-back, no questions asked refund.
XRamp says it is the first provider to offer free re-issues for the lifetime of a certificate. It also has an automated re-issuing system in place. Harris explains that not only is the re-issue free of charge but hosts selling XRamp certificates can log on and re-issue them automatically. This is particularly important in the event of a service interruption, when hosts need to get their customers back up and running as soon as possible.
“We were definitely the first people out there to say, ‘if you buy a cert for a year, we don’t want you to have to buy another one in the event that your server crashes or you want to change hosting companies,’” says Harris. “We will allow you to continue with that same cert and just get a re-issue.”
XRamp also offers a full-service installation. Hosts that buy certificates on behalf of their customers can pass the login information of their boxes to XRamp, which will then take care of the entire installation process for a $50 fee. An automated support utility probes the certificate installation and finds errors, while suggesting ways they can be fixed.
When Web hosts add new services such as digital certificates, integration is always an issue. Harris notes that hosts often can find SSL certification procurement and provisioning to be a tedious and even cumbersome process. And the company has been sensitive to those needs. “The way that we have set up our company from the very beginning was to make it very easy for Web hosting companies to get into the digital certificate marketplace,” says Harris. An XMP-based API enables smooth integration into any existing control panel system and source code samples are included if necessary.
Making the process even easier and enticing to resellers is a complete private label service. XRamp will design and create the Web pages with a host’s logo and branding and connect to its own back end, enabling the company to start selling certificates to its customers immediately without expending much of its resources.”We take care of all the customers support, all aspects of the business, it’s not a burden to them,” says Harris. And since most customers prefer to buy all their Web site services from a single vendor, having XRamp handle things enables hosts to prevent customers from jumping to competitors that offer a full complement of services.
“We’re focused on making it as easy as possible for the Web hosting companies to add a new revenue stream, while providing a service that is needed by their customers.”
A 256-bit Web server certificate from XRamp is priced starting at $128 per year and $256 for three years.
