StartCom is a certificate authority that sells
SSL certificates.
StartCom was established in 2004, and is based in Eilat, Israel. It is well-known for offering free SSL certificates that are domain-validated and supported in most of the web browsers.
StartCom has three main activities: StartCom Linux Enterprise (Linux distribution), StartSSL (Certificate Authority) and MediaHost (Web hosting).
If you have a website and you want to have an SSL certificate installed on it, for free then YES, you can. Try
StartSSL.com or
CAcert.org.
StartCom offers the free (for personal use) Class 1 X.509 SSL certificate "StartSSL Free", which works for web servers (SSL/TLS) as well as for E-mail encryption (S/MIME). It also offers Class 2 and 3 certificates as well as Extended Validation Certificates, where a comprehensive validation (with costs) is mandatory
.The "StartCom Certificate Policy & Practice Statements" document §3
.1.2.1 is explicit that the Class 1 (free) certificates are for non-commercial uses only.
The previous version of the CPS did not include this restriction.
CAcert.org is a community-driven certificate authority that issues free public key certificates to the public
(Unlike other certificate authorities which are commercial and sell certificates). CAcert has over 200,000 verified users and has issued nearly 800,000 certificates as of January 2012.
These certificates can be used to digitally sign and encrypt email, authenticate and authorize users connecting to websites and secure data transmission over the Internet. Any application that supports the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) can make use of certificates signed by CAcert, as can any application that uses X.509 certificates, e.g. For encryption or code signing and document signatures.
