Every certificate encrypts traffic the same way — what changes is how much identity verification happens before it's issued, and how many subdomains it covers.

Domain Validated (DV)

Confirms you control the domain, nothing more. Issued in minutes, free via AutoSSL on shared hosting. Fine for blogs, portfolios and most small business sites.

Organization Validated (OV)

Adds manual verification of your business identity, which then displays in the certificate details. Common for business sites where visitors might check who they're dealing with.

Wildcard

Covers a domain plus every subdomain (*.yourdomain.com) under one certificate — useful once you have staging.yourdomain.com, mail.yourdomain.com, app.yourdomain.com, etc.

Not sure which you need? If you're not running subdomains and don't need an extended-validation business trust indicator, free DV via AutoSSL covers 90% of use cases.

All three encrypt equally well — the padlock icon looks the same to visitors regardless of validation level. The difference is entirely about verification depth and subdomain coverage, not security strength.