Is SSL necessary if Gmail/TLS on contact forms?

What I really need to know is whether our visitors’ info is vulnerable on our end in any way other than how it is sent to my email which is by Gmail. Thanks!

Whatever, everything should be SSL and your visitors will have more confidence in your website when they see the green padlock. Google has a slight ranking advantage for SSL sites as well, or so they say, though in my testing I’ve not seen any sort of obvious ranking bump after switching to SSL.

Warning about SSL. When you switch you may have to deal with mixed content errors that trigger browser warnings. Even Google’s own advertising can trigger the warnings! As with a lot of this stuff, allocate some time to the switch.

MTN

Ok, thanks. Not looking forward to the SSL headaches, but I am responsible to our visitors when they when they type in their names, emails and addresses on our Contact 7 forms… those pages, at least, should be encrypted… I was just wondering, is this the only way to go? Our site is on shared hosting and StartSSL, which issued me a free certificate, needs our site on a dedicated server. What am I missing? I have a WordPress site, with Wordfence and Norton Anti-virus and even Captcha, plus Gmail/TLS for transmitting visitor info from our site to my email box. Yet I still need SSL? Sorry to ask my same question again…

According to Google, everybody needs SSL. Makes sense to me. Resistance if futile. MTN

Ok, I give. Thanks for taking the time to respond to my question!