August 01 2017
So you want to get SSL on your site but don't want to pay anything? Then you found the right place, read on for the best options available now
Lets Encrypt is a relatively new option for getting an SSL Certificate issued for your domain. You can also combine up to 100 domains in one certificate, info here
There is one catch with these certificates - they expire in 90 days! This forces you to automate the renewal process so check out their documentation here to get started.
There are a few websites ( like this one, and this one ) that let you go through the verification process so you can get a certificate without having to install their certbot or any other client. Automating this will be tricky but for testing it would be perfect or any other short lived project.
One option is to get CloudFlare to do everything for you. This way you don't get a certificate but you also don't have to worry about setting it up and renewing it either.
To set this up first you need a free Cloudflare account and you need to be using it for your DNS. You need to use their CDN service (available for free in their free plan) as well. This means traffic coming in will run through Cloudflare's servers before getting to your server and Cloudflare will serve a cached version if it can or it will pass the request on to you. It also means Cloudflare is able to pass that reply back out in https so you don't even need a certificate (you can see this in action for this website).