If your website's address bar says "Not Secure" — or worse, visitors see a full-page warning — customers are turning away before they ever see what you offer. The good news: the cause is almost always one missing thing, and the fix is usually quick.
What the warning means
Browsers check whether a website has a valid security certificate (called SSL or TLS). The certificate scrambles information travelling between your visitor and your site — passwords, contact forms, card details — so it can't be read along the way. No certificate, no padlock, and the browser says so, loudly.
Why it matters for business
- Trust: visitors regularly abandon sites flagged "Not Secure" — especially before typing anything into a form.
- Search ranking: Google has used HTTPS (the secure version) as a ranking signal for years. An insecure site starts behind its competitors.
- Forms: browsers actively warn people not to fill in forms on insecure pages — that's leads walking away.
How to fix it
1. Check whether you already have a certificate
Visit your site using https:// at the start of the address. If the padlock appears there, your site has a certificate but is still serving the old insecure version too — your host can redirect everyone to the secure version.
2. Ask your host for a certificate
Reputable hosts issue certificates free (via Let's Encrypt) and renew them automatically. If your host wants a yearly fee for basic SSL, that's a sign to shop around — every ValoHosting plan includes it at no cost, set up for you.
3. If it worked before and broke recently
Certificates expire every few months and normally renew automatically. When renewal quietly fails, the warning appears out of nowhere. This is a host-side fix — tell your host (or tell us, and we'll reissue it in minutes).
What about the "advanced" certificates?
For most businesses the free certificate is exactly right. Extended validation (EV) certificates — which involve verifying your company's legal identity — mainly matter for online shops and financial services that want extra vetting. Our Premium plan supports them.