Introducing Free SSL for All Stores

With SSL enabled in your shop, you now have better security, which will help build more trust with your customers and give your shop a nice little SEO boost!

After lots of testing, we’re excited to offer SSL completely free for Big Cartel stores. Whether you use your free Big Cartel URL or a custom domain, you can be covered by this added layer of security.

You heard that right - no need to buy your own custom SSL certificate, we’ll create it and set it up automatically at no cost to you. While your store’s checkout has always used SSL to protect credit card details and other sensitive information, now we use SSL for the entire shopping experience!

SSL stands for “secure sockets layer” (we didn’t name it), which is security encryption technology used on websites to prevent bad people from stealing or intercepting info submitted via online forms. Usually the quickest way to check if a site is covered with SSL protection is to see if it starts with https:// instead of http://. You might also notice a lock icon in the address bar of your browser on SSL-protected sites. 🔒

Once SSL is enabled for your store, we’ll automatically redirect everyone to the https version of your store. If you have a custom domain, we’ll also tell search engines to prefer your custom domain, giving you another SEO boost. Google has taken SSL into consideration when ranking search results for awhile, but this year they’ve started giving that factor even more weight. That makes this feature even more important for your domain.

If your store isn't using https, or you see a red lock on the Account > Your shop section of your admin, it means you have unsecured assets that need to be fixed before we can enable SSL. Don’t stress! This is likely due to something like photos or files that are uploaded to another service and embedded in your store. You can fix this by following the steps in our help article on SSL, and we’ll be reaching out to any affected shops to get this sorted out as quickly as possible.

And it bears repeating - even if you have unsecured assets in your shop, your store’s checkout has and will continue to always use SSL, since that’s where sensitive payment information needs to be encrypted.

SSL is ready to go now, so log into your admin or visit your store to see this in action!