SSL Certificate Types

After some changes in 2007, there are now 2 classes of SSL certs:

1. Domain Verification: only domain ownership verification based on email and/or phone and WHOIS record
2. Extended Verification: verification of both domain ownership and business entity

DV is cheaper and most CAs issue them within hours. EV requires a few working days and costs more.

In terms of user experience if it's EV, there's a nice looking green bar in some browsers like Chrome. But there's no warning whatsoever for DV. So DV looks to be enough in most cases.

Resources:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Validation_Certificate