The "Shared SSL" function allows 3Essentials customers low-cost, less-complex method for having their website accessible via HTTPS/SSL.

The most typical method for having your website accessible via HTTP/SSL,would be to use "Dedicated SSL".  With "Dedicated SSL", your hosting plan would need a dedicated IP address, and you would purchase and install an SSL Certificate issued to your domain name, www.yourdomainname.com for example.  At that point, people could access your site one of two ways:

• http://www.yourdomainname.com
• https://www.yourdomainname.com

This is the ideal solution for an ecommerce based website. 

As a lower cost alternative, we have a feature that is called SharedSSL... it provides a method for having content on your site accessible through an HTTPS connection without the expense of a dedicated IP address, and an SSL certificate issued to your domain name. Through SharedSSL, you can access content on your site through one of our websites, which has an SSL certificate installed on it.  The exact URL and options will vary based on which control panel your hosting plan with 3Essentials uses, but an example would be:

• https://webX.3essentials.com/yourdomain-com
• or perhaps
• https://webX.3essentials.com/~yourusername

In this manner, the SSL certificate is issued to 3Essentials, for the hostname "webX.3essentials.com", and you're "sharing" the use of the certificate, by accessing your site via a virtual directory off of the webX.3essentials.com site. 

For details on this feature for your specific control panel, please see the following applicable article:

• For Windows hosting plans, see: http://knowledge.3essentials.com/web-hosting/article/129/Shared-SSL-using-SharedSSL-on-3Essentials-Windows-plans.html
• For Linux hosting plans, see: http://knowledge.3essentials.com/web-hosting/article/752/Shared-SSL-using-SharedSSL-on-3Essentials-Linux-plans.html