The facts about SSL Please

I installed Multisite, and when I tried to edit the dashboards of any of my other sites, it redirects me to some other website on some other server. This is because, like everyone, I edit wordpress using HTTPS so my login credentials and work are safe and encrypted.

They are telling me that, because I use shared hosting, I have to have something they are calling a “wildcard ssl” ….for just having subdomains??????? That does not seem logical.

What are facts here? What’s the easiest way to be able to get a https connection to my subdomain dashboard without paying 100.00 year for some fancy SSL cert?