Currently dealing with a big hosting provider that not only charges you for 'SSL' certificates, but also makes you install them yourself. They also tell you only to use SSL for sensitive pages, because it's slow, and it takes up to 24 hours for a DNS change to take effect (on their nameservers, not globally).
@pwaring sound like you need a new host.
@pwaring @PetterOfCats there must be serious lock in to get away with being that shit these days.