< > 2) Thawte is owned by Verisign, which also owns NSI, and do you trust
< > them to keep that pricing at this level when they are competing with
< > themselves at $399/yr? Do you want them to have your customers in
< > their customer database, thus giving them implicit permission to
< > market to them?
< This applies to Tucows too, since they get their certificates at Entrust,
< which in turn is a Thawte CA authority. I can't say if they all
< shar customer
< lists, though.
This is incorrect. Entrust runs their own CA. They have cross-signed their
certificates with Thawte to ensure recognition by pre-v3.0 browsers, but
that is the only connection. Entrust is *not* a Thawte CA authority (if I
understand your use of the term).
<
< > 3) Certs are not levels in the sense you mean. The Entrust CA
< > certificate, like the Equifax CA certificate, has been signed by
< > Thawte, which enables those CA's to work with older browsers without
< > error messages being sent to the users.
<
< To the customers this is not the case. They know Thawte better
< that the otwo
< others and their perception is that they obtain certificates of
< "3rd level".
The question of brand recognition and technical capabilities of the cert are
two very separate issues. While Thawte may have better recognition than
Tucows (in this space at least), the certificate offering by Entrust is
superior. Further, customers using our offering will not be faced with
increased fees as will Thawte users as Verisign phases out the Thawte brand.
Similar dynamics apply to Equifax as well.
<
< > However, Tucows isn't competitive at $99 anyway, I'd recommend the
< > business partner program at Equifax as it stands right now.
<
< For Canadian customers this might be OK, even in US. But when
< explaining this
< to overseas customers, they tend to trust Thawte more. Why would
< they get a
< certificate with a reseller that's been in business for 1yr.
< when Thawte is
< the primary CA and has been around much longer ?
<
There is no such thing as a "primary CA".
-rwr
