Let me help you build customer trust and increase visitors to your website! Security providers have a common goal - to boost your website's conversion rate. These third party verification service providers each have their own area of expertise and have established their own reputation. TRUSTe is known for its privacy seals and McAfee is known for security in PCI scanning. On the other hand, Trust Guard specializes in multi packages of trust seals and PCI scanning. However, they're all different when it comes to requirements, method, service and pricing.
So I have taken a look at all these three trust seal providers and here are the standards I observed to make the comparison:
1. Reputation
2. Service vs. Pricing
TRUSTe is the leading provider of privacy seals and trust marks since its establishment in 1997. Being in the industry for 12 years, their services has been utilized by companies such as eBay and IBM and has certified more than 2,000 websites.
They are aligned in helping businesses of all sizes build customer trust through privacy policies with guaranteed assistance in dispute resolution of complaints about the collection of private information from customers.
Services and Pricing:
1. Basic Privacy policy (No seal) - starts from $249 /year
2. TRUSTe privacy policy- starts from $49/month
3. TRUSTe privacy plus (TRUSTe certified web privacy seal) - starts from $949/year
McAfee Secure (formerly hacker safe) protects world class infrastructures like Toshiba, American Red Cross, Shop NBC, etc. They provide daily vulnerability scans and alert McAfee customers for vulnerabilities that could affect their network. They scan your website and make sure that it's safe from hackers.
Over 80,000 websites have a McAfee Secure trust mark and they guarantee to increase conversion of visitors to buyers. McAfee Secure, as a PCI Scan vendor has been trusted by organizations all over the world to help them in their PCI certification.
Services and Pricing:
1. McAfee Secure trust mark- $859.00 Year + $100.00 Setup Fee
2. Full Service w/ no trust mark (For level 2-4 merchants, quarterly and unlimited manual scans, unlimited telephone support, vulnerability remediation support from certified security specialists and assistance in PCI security policy and online self-assessment questionnaire) - $319.00/year
Trust Guard is a division of Global Marketing Strategies - an ecommerce and SEO company with 11 years of experience in online and sales marketing. Trust Guard is known to provide 3 kinds of trust seals: security seals, business seals and privacy seals. All of these are aimed in protecting website data, building credibility and increasing sales.
Services and Pricing:
1. Security Verified seal - $197/ year
2. Business Verified seal - $197 / year
3. Privacy Verified seal -$197 / year
4. Multi Seal Package with Daily PCI scanning - $697 / year
5. Multi-Seal Package w/ Quarterly PCI Scanning- $597 / year
6. PCI scanning only $ 297/ year
Do get a form of visible proof that you are trust worthy - more so if you are an online merchant who is just starting to create a reputable name. In choosing which trust seal to get, it would be helpful to first take note of the brand's reliability. Among the three brands I've mentioned, all seem to be the market leaders in their specialty of seal verification, and each having more than a decade of experience. Many websites and organizations can even attest to the quality of services they provide. Therefore I can say that they are all reputable brands in their own right.
However let's go further to the deal breaker- affordability! TRUSTe offers no less than privacy seals and its costs even more than Trust Guard's. You can save hundreds of dollars on Trust Guard, plus you can even combine PCI scanning with a Privacy seal- a combination that will also cost less than privacy seal alone by TRUSTe.
When it comes to vulnerability scanning and PCI certification, McAfee costs more than Trust Guard with less than hundred dollars, however if you want to combine PCI scanning with a trust seal- you can definitely save more with Trust Guard at half the cost!
Invest in trust seals but don't just instantly get one for the sake of it. As a business person, you must ensure the balance between productivity and cost efficiency. My final take on this is to get the brand that promises what it says (look out for money back guarantees too) but at the same time make sure that it is reasonably priced.