Tell HN: Digicert is turning into Symantec

59 points

7 years ago

It was an open secret, linked from Microsoft MSDN page on code signing [1] - if you are to enter Digicert site through https://www.digicert.com/friends/sysdev link, you'd get a 50% discounted offer on all certificates including EV code signing certs. Coupled with Digicert's US-based no-nonsense support it made buying an EV cert from them an absolute no-brainer. Recommended them more times than I can remember.

Then they "absorbed" Symantec.

First, the quality of the support took a nose dive. Live chat that used to be almost instantaneously available started showing queues of 10-15 minutes. Earlier this year the support started deflecting all sales-related questions to "your sales representative, who will get in touch with you shortly." What useв to be a 30 second chat to get the renewal price matched against the last year now turned into some painful bullshit that ended up with sales rep claiming no discounts were available, but he'd be willing to make a massive one-time exception of 5% off.

But the /sysdev link still worked, the hope that these Symantec influences will blow over was still there.

No more. The link now redirects to $600/yr pricing. Support is slow and useless, there are now industry-standard obnoxious sales reps, where none is needed, and so Digicert is all but Symantec now. What a shame I say.

Just FYI.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/dashboard/get-a-code-signing-certificate

39 comments