The $30-per-year offering speeds up the process of purchasing an SSL cert by reducing the amount of verification of the customer’s identity. The process is automated, meaning it takes a few minutes, rather than a few days.
Turbo SSL, like rival services from the likes of GeoTrust and VeriSign’s Thawte, compares information about the buyer with information found in the Whois record for the domain for which he is buying before issuing the cert.
Manual verification SSL cert services tend to do lookups in business directories and other public databases before issuing the cert, and are more expensive.
Similar offerings, normally priced from $40 to $150, are available from rivals like VeriSign and GeoTrust. Go Daddy says its $30 offering is compatible with 99% of browsers, compared to the 96% claimed by GeoTrust’s cheapest offering.
