Q: What if my domain name is registered to a person or company other than the one requesting the certificate?
A: We will require a Domain Release Letter from the person or company to which the domain is registered, authorizing your organization to use the domain for business purposes. There is also a link on your status page to a Domain Release Letter.

Q: How do I know who my domain is registered to?
A: You will need to look up the WHOIS output for your domain.

Q: What is a WHOIS?
A: This is a record that was created when you bought your domain. It is a way of tracking who owns which domain. Your WHOIS information can normally be obtained from the registrar that you bought your domain from, or your ISP. In most cases InstantSSL will get your WHOIS directly from the registrar, so you will not need to send it to us.

Q: When do I need to send my WHOIS to InstantSSL?
A: When your WHOIS output is not easy to obtain. In this case we will send you an email asking for a WHOIS output. This is normally for countries who do not have a WHOIS server set up for searching.

Q: What is a Common name?
A: The "common name" of a web server certificate is by convention set to the domain name of the server upon which the certificate will be used. The domain name can be a wildcard, such as "*.microsoft.com", or it can be the name of a standard host, like "www.microsoft.com".

Q: Is there any other documentation that I will need to send InstantSSL for my domain?
A: If you are a subdivision of the company who owns the domain, we will require a letter proving this. If your domain is registered to a company and you have subsequently changed the organization name in any way, we will need documentation to prove that.

Q: What is a Domain Release Letter?
A: This is a letter from the owner of the domain stating that you are allowed to use the domain for business purposes and we can issue a certificate to you.

More Information:
Your organization will have gone through a process of registration in order to register your domain name. Because we will be issuing a certificate tied to a domain name we need to be sure that you have the right to use that domain.

The sooner we get any documentation that we need for your certificate, the sooner we can issue it!