The last few months I’ve had to go through several of the annoying certificate-renewal processes that recur every year. It’s always a painful process, not only because you always start the process too late, it’s a lot of effort and paperwork (which never goes smoothly), but you also realize that you’re paying quite a lot of money, for what exactly?
We are a small SaaS (Software as a Service) company, and we have the following digital certificates:

• Two wildcard SSL certificates. Every SaaS company that offers a separate sub-domain for each customer needs these. We pay €775 for each wildcard certificate, with a 2-year validity (from Thawte).
• A code-signing certificate. We offer a few rich-client applications from our web-applications, using ClickOnce technology. These applications need a digital signature. Cost of the certificate is €385 for a 2-year code-signing (Authenticode) certificate from Thawte.
• A BAPI certificate. This is needed for (e-mail) communications for the Dutch tax authorities. Costs €240, with a validity of 3 years.
• A PKI certificate from the Dutch government, for SOAP-webservice communications with the Dutch authorities (Government, Chambers of Commerce, Banks). Cost: €600 for a certificate with a validity of 3 years.

In my case, the renewal of Thawte’s code-signing certificate was especially painful, as it didn’t work on Windows 8, and I was send into several dead-ends by Thawte’s support, such as “try it in Firefox” (Authenticode certificate renewal only works in IE), or “start IE9 in Windows 8” (how exactly?).

All in all, it may not seem a lot of money in total, but if you include the effort it takes every time, I find it quite a burden. It would be nice if in the future you would only need a single digital certificate for the company as a whole.