I was wondering if it makes a difference if clients use domain.com instead of mail.domain.com download either pop or imap mail.
I ask this because under the Virtualmin Pro secure cert management area you can copy the cert to webmin, usermin, dovecot and postfix.
I was thinking of getting a Multiple Domains (UCC): cert Godaddy offers for 89.99 bucks to secure 5 sub-domains so I could secure mail.domain.com smtp.domain.com as well as perhaps others.
If it makes no difference weather it's mail.domain.com smtp.domain.com or just the plain domain.com then the main cert should work fine.
The budget cert seems to work fine www.domain.com and just domain.com so I'm guessing the Multiple Domains (UCC): cert would do the 2 the above plus mail.domain.com, smtp.domain.com which is 4 so that would leave one extra for something else like forum.domain.com?
Am I not understanding the technical reasoning behind keeping them separate?
Or will it work ok using the 30 dollar cert I now have and have customers connect their mail clients using just domain.com
Thanks
John
If it makes no difference weather it's mail.domain.com smtp.domain.com or just the plain domain.com then the main cert should work fine.
It does not matter at all; so long as the name points to your server, and resolves to your IP address, it'll work great.
The budget cert seems to work fine www.domain.com and just domain.com so I'm guessing the Multiple Domains (UCC): cert would do the 2 the above plus mail.domain.com, smtp.domain.com which is 4 so that would leave one extra for something else like forum.domain.com?
Yup, it would work with a UCC cert.
Or will it work ok using the 30 dollar cert I now have and have customers connect their mail clients using just domain.com
It's all personal preference :-)
The reason to use a different domain name for mail is so that if you ever decide to offload email to a different server than web traffic, all you have to do is change the IP address for mail.domain.com (or smtp.domain.com).
If you don't foresee changing putting those on different servers, there isn't much of an advantage to using a different domain name for mail.
-Eric
Thanks Eric,
That was a big help.
Since there are so many mail clients connecting to the server that are already configured with mail.domain.com I decided to flip for the UCC cert so we could all access mail and the Virtualmin Pro control panels via a cert from an authoritative entity.
Godaddy was pretty cool about refunding my 3 day old cert when I said I'd like to get the UCC cert. Plus I was able to use a coupon from their newsletter for 20% off any purchase over 75 bucks so that was nice too.
I have a private server for me and a few close customers and have been using a self signed cert for quite some time.
This UCC Cert should make things easier. e.g. Google Chrome makes it kind of hard to permanently accept a self signed cert. Chrome gives you a BIG RED SCARY screen to proceed past with no simple way to accept the self signed cert. Unlike Firefox which gives you a button to immediately accept the cert permanently.
Thanks again Eric for your informative response.
John
John Wolgamot