Best Web Hosting Canada 2024

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Matthew Rogers

Author: Matthew Rogers

Last Updated on July 2, 2023

As a web agency with a LOT of web hosting accounts (partially for hosting our clients, and partially because we have lots of side-projects and like to experiment ?) we’ve got a pretty good idea of what the best website hosting in Canada should look like!

We went through all the hosting services where we have accounts, analysed which web hosts are working well, and which ones aren’t (and why). Then we built this massive web hosting review & comparison page to share what we found, enjoy!

Top 10 Web Hosting Services Canada 2024

  1. HostPapa – Best Canadian Web Host Overall
  2. Hostinger – Best for Value
  3. Web hosting Canada – Best for Small Business
  4. SiteGround – Best for WordPress
  5. GreenGeeks – Best for Beginners
  6. CloudWays – Best Host for Developers
  7. HostUpon – Best Host for Resellers
  8. WP Engine – Best for eCommerce
  9. HostGator – Experienced Hosting Provider
  10. InMotion Hosting – Great Business Web Host
Web Hosting CompanyOverall RatingPrice/moFeaturesWebsite
HostPapa logoCAD $2.95 (down from $8.99/mo - Special MangoMatter Discount)100 GB
  • HQ + servers in Canada
  • Very affordable (charges in CAD)
  • A LOT of support options
  • Great performance
  • 30-day money-back guarantee
Grab Your Discount
hostinger logoUSD $1.9910 GB
  • Free SSL
  • Free Domain
  • Super affordable
Visit Site
WHCLogoCAD $3.89 (down from $5.99)Unlimited
  • HQ + Servers in Canada
  • Affordable (charges in CAD)
  • Amazing performance
  • 24/7 bilingual support
Visit Site
Siteground logoUSD $3.9910 GB
  • Optimized for WordPress
  • Free SSL and CDN
  • Daily backups
  • Google Cloud
Visit Site
GreengeeksLogoUSD $2.95 (down from $9.95)Unlimited
  • Super green hosting
  • Quick and Easy setup
  • 30-day money back guarantee
  • Servers in Canada and world-wide
Visit Site

A few of the sites we’ve been featured on:

Featured on sites

Best Canadian Web Hosting Services

Here are the 13 best web hosting reviews in Canada, detailing their cost, support options, and disk space:

1. HostPapa: Best Web Hosting Overall

About

HostPapa review

Website: www.hostpapa.ca
Price:
 $2.95
Disk space: 100 GB
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • ~20-500ms Load Time
  • 99.99% Uptime Guarantee
  • 24/7 Support
  • 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
  • Website Builder
  • Free Site Transfer
  • Free Domain Registration
  • Free SSL
  • 400+ Applications Supported
  • CloudLinux Servers

HostPapa launched as one of the first green hosts around, and they’ve kept it up, offsetting all power consumption with eco-friendly, green energy sources. With their HQ in Canada, servers in Toronto, and prices that are actually in CAD instead of USD, I think they’re a perfect and very reliable pick as a Canadian web hosting provider!

They offer a lot of free things, too, like free migration from your old host if needed, a free domain name, free SSL for security, etc. + offer a 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re not happy…

Honestly, if you’re going local, HostPapa is the best web hosting Canada has to offer!

Support

I like that they provide A WHOLE LOT of options for support. These include Telephone Support, Email, Live Chat, Knowledge Base, Video Tutorials, Weekly Webinars, Network Status Page, and a Free One-On-One Video Training Session, it’s very impressive and super handy!

HostPapa features


Speed

As mentioned above, they have a speedy server in Canada, but if you need to target other countries, Cloudflare CDN is provided for free on all plans. This means your website data is stored as a cache on various locations worldwide, ensuring fast website speeds for visitors far away from your primary data center. Enhanced solid-state drives are also given, ensuring faster website loading speeds compared to traditional disk drives.

I also love that additional performance boosts such as rocket fast premium servers, more resource allocation per account, and fewer accounts per server are included on their most expensive web hosting plan, Business Pro.

Hosting Plans

PlanWebsitesDisk SpacePrice / Month
Starter1100 GB$2.95
Plus10100 GB$5.06
ProUnlimitedUnlimited$5.06

Pros

  • Super affordable
  • Free website migration
  • Free SSL
  • Servers in Canada
  • Charges in CAD!

With our special MangoMatter discount, their cheapest web hosting plan starts at only CAD $2.95/mo (down from $8.95/mo)

2. Hostinger – Cheapest Web Host

About

Hostinger review

Hostinger Logo

URL: hostinger.com
Price: USD $1.99
Disk space: 10 GB
Support: Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • ~20-250ms Load Time
  • 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
  • hPanel Custom Control Panel
  • Cache Manager
  • GIT Support
  • Free SSL
  • Free Domain
  • Zyro Website Builder

Hostinger is experiencing incredible growth right now and for excellent reason! They can provide hosting services for websites at very affordable prices, while retaining excellent quality.

We liked the process of onboarding new users. Their configuration was among the easiest we’ve ever experienced (and we’ve gone through several hosts in the past). And then there’s the fact that they’ve got servers across the globe.

You can choose any of these locations where your site can be hosted: United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Lithuania, Brazil, Singapore, or Indonesia.

Hostinger scaling hosting

For the hosting options, they offer the standard shared hosting (which is what most people require), WordPress hosting (same as shared hosting, but it’s only there to demonstrate the fact that they are able to host WP websites with efficiency), Cloud hosting, VPS as well as email hosting.

All plans include the standard SSD speedy storage capacity, 99.9 100% uptime assurance and a free SSL certificate Unlimited bandwidth, etc.

A Custom Control Panel

We must mention Hostinger’s custom-designed control panel, it’s impressive. Although most hosts use cPanel to be their control panel to add and deploy websites, Hostinger created their own. It’s cleaner than cPanel and certainly is an attractive value-added feature to their offerings.

It’s hPanel, and it’s an extremely user-friendly and intuitive control panel that users can use regardless of their technical expertise. It doesn’t leave any functionality…from email or domain name registrations, it can handle everything.

24/7 Support

For support for customers, they’ve got an extensive knowledge base that includes instructions to assist you in getting started. They also provide live chat support 24/7/365 should you require assistance. Support is generally quick and responsive.

In Summary

They’re experts at what they do They provide high-quality hosting for a reasonable price and a competent support team to support it. In the event that you’re unhappy with their service They even provide the option of a 30-day money-back guarantee.

They have 3 shared hosting plans, with the cheapest being only USD $1.99/mo (down from $7.99).

Hosting Plans

PlanWebsitesDisk SpacePrice / Month
Single Shared Hosting150 GBUSD $1.99
Premium Shared Hosting100100 GBUSD $2.99
Business Shared Hosting100200 GBUSD $3.99

Pros

  • Offers very affordable monthly plans
  • 24/7 live support
  • Free Migration
  • Free back-ups

Cons 

  • Limited resources offered with certain plans

3. WHC: Best Canadian Hosting for Small Business

About

whc logo

Website: whc.ca
Price:
 $1.99 (CAD)
Disk space: Unlimited
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • 100% Canadian
  • 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
  • Google Ads Credit
  • Free site transfers
  • Unlimited disk space
  • 24/7 bilingual support
  • Automated Backups
  • 30-day money-back guarantee

Based in Montreal, Web Hosting Canada (WHC) has been going strong since 2003. They know hosting inside and out and their experience really shows (VERY reliable service)! I like that they are one of the few Canadian hosting providers with servers on both East & West coasts in order to deliver faster speed.

In addition to hosting and domains, WHC offers SEO and Email marketing plans that you can try out with free trials. We also really liked their cloud server plans… it offers an almost dedicated server type performance at a much more affordable price.

I think it’s amazing that they offer 24/7 bilingual (!!) support via email, phone, and chat & include unlimited disk space. + They actually charge in CAD, yay!

Their cheapest plan starts at only CAD 1.99/month (down from $9.99).

whcca prices

Support

WHC provides various options for support: 24/7 Live Chat, Phone Support, and Online Helpdesk. Support is available in both French and English!

Speed

WHC operates data centers in both Vancouver and Montreal. The data center will automatically be chosen based on your location. If you have a Canadian business, having your website hosted in Canada is great for speed and for privacy requirements.

They use servers with solid-state drives (SSDs) which, according to the company, are 7x faster than traditional mechanical drives. They also include free website acceleration using LiteSpeed technology, which really makes your WordPress sites fly!

WHC allocates 100% of one CPU core’s resources to your PRO hosting account, + 1GB of Memory (RAM) and 5MB/s I/O. Free Cloudflare CDN is included with all plans as well.

Hosting Plans

PlanDisk SpacePrice / MonthExtras
GoUnlimited$1.99Google Ads Credit
ProUnlimited$3.66Unlimited websites
EnterpriseUnlimited$11.63Dedicated IP

Pros

  • HQ + Servers in Canada
  • Very affordable! (charges in CAD)
  • Unlimited disk space
  • Amazing Performance!
  • 24/7 bilingual support
  • Daily backups included

4. SiteGround: Best WordPress Hosting

About

SiteGround review

SiteGround logo

Website: www.siteground.com
Price:
 $3.99 (USD)
Disk space: 10 GB
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • ~100ms Load Time
  • 99.99% Uptime Guarantee
  • 24/7 Support
  • Free SSL, CDN
  • Daily Backups
  • 500+ Applications Supported
  • Google Cloud with SSD-persistent Storage

This is one of our all-time favourite US-based hosting companies, they have powerful servers around the world (though none in Canada), and top-notch support. SiteGround is one of the fastest-growing hosts around, and with good reason!

Their focus on security, support, and ease of use is pretty impressive. They even developed in-house security systems to continually monitor and act on potential security issues.

They also come recommended for WordPress, by WordPress (which is pretty rare! They can, of course, tackle any CMS you throw at them).

SiteGround has 3 hosting plans, their most affordable plan starts at USD $3.99/mo (53% off the usual price)!

Support

SiteGround provides various options for support including Knowledge Base, Tutorials, Live Chat, Phone, and Ticket Support. According to the company, Phone and Live Chat Support will help you get instant replies while Tickets would take 10 minutes.

Customer reviews of their support system were astoundingly positive. Most customers stated that the representatives were very polite and helpful. They garnered a high rating among online customer reviewers. Hurray for SiteGround!

Speed

When it comes to speed, SiteGround has plenty to offer. They provide SSDs for faster website loading speeds compared to traditional drives. They also have a custom-built caching plugin called SuperCacher for even faster loading speeds.

Data centers of the company are located in the US, UK, NL, and SG. Although there are no data centers in Canada, SiteGround makes up for it with Free Cloudflare integration.

Hosting Plans

PlanWebsitesDisk SpacePrice / Month
StartUp110 GB$2.99
GrowBigUnlimited20 GB$7.49
GoGeekUnlimited40 GB$12.49

Pros

  • Free SSL
  • Recommended by WordPress
  • High-performance servers
  • Easily scalable

5. GreenGeeks: Best Web Host for Beginners

About

GreenGeeks review

GreenGeeks logo

URL: www.greengeeks.com
Price: USD $2.95
Disk space: Unlimited
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • ~50-450ms Load Time
  • 99.99% Uptime Guarantee
  • 24/7 Live Chat Support
  • Free Domain
  • Free SSL
  • 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
  • Free Site Transfers
  • LSCache, MariaDB
  • Custom Security Rules
  • Green Hosting (300% Energy Replacement)

GreenGeeks have been up and running since ’08, and since then have managed to become so energy efficient that they’re putting their energy consumption back 3 times into the grid through wind energy, which is quite amazing!

I think that as a web hosting service, GreenGeeks is extremely reliable, have powerful servers not only in Canada, but worldwide. They also offer unlimited disk space on even their most basic plan.

They have shared hosting plans, reseller plans, and WordPress hosting plans. Their support is available 24/7/365 and very responsive. What we really liked about GreenGeeks is the default list of free features you get with every hosting plan. Everything from a free domain name, free SSL, free website migration, free CDN integration, to super-fast SSD storage, and an impressive security system to keep everything running smooth!

Add to that a 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied.

Their cheapest plan starts at only USD $2.95/month (down from $9.95).

Greengeeks features

Support

I’m impressed with the variety of options for support: Knowledge Base, Live Chat, Phone Support, and Email/ Ticket Submission. Live chat is available 24/7/365. While telephone support is available from Mon-Fri, 9am to 12am, EST and Sat-Sun, 9am to 8pm, EST.

Speed

When it comes speed, GreenGeeks offers you multiple data centers to choose from allowing you to pinpoint a location closer to your target market. They have data centers in Toronto, CA, Amsterdam, NL, Chicago, USA, and Phoenix, USA.

They also use solid-state drives (SSDs) for faster page loading speeds as opposed to traditional hard drives. Optimized LiteSpeed web servers are used for faster loading speeds. Compared to NGINX and Apache, LiteSpeed is 2x to 5x faster. For additional power in terms of page loading speeds, GreenGeeks implemented a proprietary caching technology called PowerCacher. This exclusive feature gives you fast application loading times for enhanced user experience.

Hosting Plans

PlanWebsitesDisk SpacePrice / MonthFeatures
Lite150 GBUSD $2.95Standard Performance
ProUnlimitedUnlimitedUSD $4.95Better Performance
PremiumUnlimitedUnlimitedUSD $8.95Best Performance

Pros

  • Super green!
  • Unlimited disk space
  • 24/7 support
  • Great security
  • Easily scalable

6. Cloudways: Best Web Hosting for Developers

About

www.cloudways.com

cloudways logo

Price: USD $12
Disk space: 25 GB
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • Load Time (TTFB) Depends on Cloud Provider
  • Choose from DigitalOcean, VULTR, Linode, AWS, Google Cloud
  • 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
  • 24/7/365 Support
  • Free SSL
  • Dedicated Firewalls
  • Varnish, Memcached, and Redis
  • Staging Environment
  • Free Migration
  • Great Security

Cloudways is a different beast, it utilizes other companies’ raw servers and allows you to deploy, manage, and monitor high-performance apps and websites on those servers, cutting out the usual web hosting middle-man. If you’re even slightly techie, this can save you a lot of money.

Features include free SSL, free site migration, and the ability to install as many apps as you want.

If you’re specifically looking for this type of cloud hosting, then Cloudways is the way to go, the flexibility they offer is beyond your everyday shared hosting provider. And they’re pretty easy to scale as your site needs more server resources.

Their partners include Linode, Amazon AWS, Vultr, Digital Ocean, Stackpatch and the Google Cloud Platform.

cloudways features

Support

Cloudways gives you various options for support including Knowledge Base, Ticket Submission, Live Chat, Platform Status Page, and Online Fill-Up Forms. Through the fill-up forms, you can request a call, inquire on sales, and become a partner.

Their reviews are superb. Most reviews stated that their customer support system were very quick and prompt. Representatives know what to do to fix both easy and complicated problems. Overall, customers were pleased with their customer support service.

Speed

With their cheapest plan, 1GB worth of memory (RAM) is provided. Servers are based on solid-state drives for faster loading speeds compared to traditional mechanical drives. Servers are also PHP 7 Ready.

PHP 7 is the choice of web developers at present giving superior and faster performance of websites and applications compared to PHP 5.6. CloudwaysCDN also allows for faster website loading speeds across the world as data cached in multiple locations around the world.

They have Optimized Stacks with Advanced Cache such as Memcached, Carnish, and Redis for expedited responses. Fast hosting speeds for WordPress and Magento is also available because of its Breeze cache and Full Page cache, respectively. Also, they currently have 60 data centers around the world which you can choose from.

More importantly, they have a data center in Toronto, Canada allowing you to pinpoint the Canadian target market and give them fast loading speeds.

Pros

  • Super scalable
  • Affordable cloud hosting
  • Multiple cloud providers

Cons

  • More expensive than shared hosting
  • More technical knowledge required

7. HostUpon: Best Web Hosting for Resellers

About

HostUpon review

Website: hostupon.ca
Price:
 $2.95 (USD)
Disk space: Unlimited
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • 100% Canadian
  • WordPress Optimized
  • Custom firewall
  • Unlimited disk space
  • Free website transfer
  • Free domain
  • 24/7 in-house support
  • 30-day money-back guarantee

The thing that sets HostUpon apart from the competition is definitely their commitment to having local Canadian sales and support! I think it does really make a difference.

They have hosting plans for the usual shared hosting (which is what most people need), WordPress hosting for a more managed solution, VPS, and dedicated servers. Their founders have been in the industry since 1998, so they know the hosting game pretty well, and it shows! Their servers use SSD drives, MariaDB for MySQL performance, and LiteSpeed with LSCache which really maximises performance for WordPress installations.

I really love their reseller setup and packages, complete with WHM control panel and very competitive pricing. It also includes a free migration service and the option to set up custom nameservers!

Add to that a very speedy data center in Toronto (+ 3 in the US), unlimited disk space, locked-in pricing (so you’ll always pay the same, even if the prices on the site go up), and finally it beats most of the competition on pricing… you’re in good hands!

They offer 3 hosting packages, their cheapest plan starts at only USD $2.95/mo (was $7.95/mo).

Support

HostUpon provides various options to get support. These include Knowledge Base, Network Status, Ticket Submission, Online Live Chat, and Telephone Support. Live Chat, Telephone Support, and Ticket Submissions are available 24/7.

Speed

Performance Boosts are available on their more expensive plans. 80% CPU resources is used on the Business Unlimited plan and a full 100% CPU is used on their Premium Unlimited Plan. The cheapest plan is allocated 40% of one CPU core’s resources (which is enough for most small to medium-sized business or blogs).

Guaranteed memory (RAM) is at 512MB. Guaranteed Disk I/O is at 512KB/s.

Hosting Plans

PlanPrice / MonthWebsitesDisk Space
StarterUSD $2.951Unlimited
BusinessUSD $5.95UnlimitedUnlimited
PremiumUSD $12.95UnlimitedUnlimited

Pros

  • Unlimited disk space
  • Canada based support and sales team
  • Prices are locked in
  • Servers in Canada and in the US
  • Free domain name

8. WP Engine: Best Managed Wordpress Host

About

WPEngine review

Wpengine Logo

Website: wpengine.com
Price:
 $35 (USD)
Disk space: Unlimited
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • ~100ms Load Time
  • 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
  • Automated Migration plugin
  • Free SSL
  • Free CDN
  • Global data centers
  • Expert WordPress support
  • Automated website maintenance
  • Daily backups
  • 60-day money-back guarantee

If you’re actually looking for super high-quality managed WordPress hosting for Canada, WP Engine is what you need! They are the market leader when it comes to hosting WordPress sites, and with good reason (though are a tad expensive).

They have an in-house custom-built caching system to serve pages super-fast (called EverCache), and combined with their CDN, they are one of the fastest WordPress hosting companies around!

Their 24/7 support obviously specializes in WordPress, enabling them to fix any issue without a hitch. On top of that, they also take care of any WordPress core updates so you don’t have to worry about it.

I love that when it’s a major update, they actually test the site first before updating to be sure nothing breaks, top-notch service. They also have live real-time threat detection, actively block DDOS attacks, and they’ll even fix your site for free if it does get hacked…

All of the above more than justifies the price tag! Interested in peace of mind and can spare the budget?

Their cheapest plan starts at USD $20/month.

Support

WPEngine provides a Resource Center, Documentation, Solution Center, System Status, Live Chat, Ticket Submission, and Phone Support to get you the help you need. According to the company, their support team is available 24/7/365.

The reviews of WPEngine’s customer support system were mixed. According to these reviews, the representatives know the ins and outs of their hosting package especially when it comes to WordPress. They were able to answer complicated questions thrown at them. On the other hand, some reviews stated that it took an average of about 3 days to get a response from them and they were unable to fix certain issues.

Speed

Data centers are available in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, Ireland, Taiwan, Belgium, and Japan. On the bright side, if your target market is located in Canada, then you can definitely offer them faster website loading speeds due to their proximity to their servers.

Free CDN integration is included to cater to a worldwide customer base.

Hosting Plans

PlanPrice / MonthWebsitesDisk SpaceVisit/mo
StartupUSD $20110GB25000
ProfessionalUSD $39315GB75000
GrowthUSD $1131020GB100000

Pros

  • WP experts
  • High-performance servers
  • Highly specialised support
  • Fully managed

Cons

  • Expensive

9. HostGator

About

HostGator review

HostGator logo

Website: www.hostgator.com
Price:
 $2.75 (USD)
Disk Space: Unlimited
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • ~100-300ms Load Time (TTFB)
  • 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
  • Free Domain
  • Free SSL
  • Free site transfers
  • 45-Day Money-Back Guarantee

HostGator, just like Bluehost and a lot of other web hosts, is owned by EIG, a web hosting giant that buys other web hosting companies. Usually, this means a decrease in support efficiency, a decrease in speed, and a few other issues. I do believe that HostGator seems to have overcome most of these and has found a very good balance of cost vs value.

Aside from hosting plans, they also offer ppc, seo, and web design services, which could come in handy if you can’t find a local digital agency to help you with your online marketing.

Hostgator has plans for shared hosting, cloud hosting, WordPress hosting, reseller hosting, VPS, dedicated server, Windows hosting, and application hosting.

That being said, for the same cost you could go with Web Hosting Canada, get servers in Canada, and great support… so I think that unless you really want to host with HostGator, there are better options.

hostgator plans

Support

Support is provided in various ways such as through a Support Portal, Video Tutorials, Telephone, Live Chat, and Ticket Submission. All of these support options are available 24/7. Reviews regarding HostGator’s support system were mixed. A lot of people were pleased with their support staff. Although, some people were also a bit angry as representatives were stated to be incompetent with the company’s products and services.

Speed

HostGator doesn’t offer much when it comes to speed. They don’t have data centers located in Canada which is a bummer if your audience is in the said location. Servers are located in Provo, Utah and Houston, Texas.

They also have mod_cloudflare installed across their shared and reseller servers. Again, this Content Distribution Network (CDN) stores your data as a cache in various locations for fast access from locations distant from the main data center.

Hosting Plans

PlanWebsitesDisk SpacePrice / MonthFeatures
Hatchling Plan1UnlimitedUSD $2.75Free Domain, Free SSL
Baby PlanUnlimitedUnlimitedUSD $3.50Free Domain, Free SSL
Business PlanUnlimitedUnlimitedUSD $5.25Free Domain, Free SSL, Dedicated IP, Free CDN

Pros

  • Cheap
  • Good cost/value balance

Cons

  • No servers in Canada
  • Overall lesser quality services

10. InMotion Hosting

About

Inmotion Hosting review

InMotion Hosting logo

URL: www.inmotionhosting.com
Price: USD $6.39
Disk space: Unlimited
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • ~50-600ms Load Time (TTFB)
  • 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
  • 24/7 Support
  • Free Domain
  • Free SSL
  • Free Automatic Backup
  • Free Migration
  • DDoS Protection
  • 90-Day Money-Back Guarantee

InMotion Hosting is another veteran here, but they focus mostly on business hosting and solutions, hence the higher cost. I think they’re pretty good, but they don’t have any data centers in Canada… combine that with the higher cost, not much reason to go with them.

They have 5 hosting types on offer: Shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS, dedicated servers, and reseller hosting. Aside from those, they also offer web design services in case you need it… and they support most popular CMSs and e-commerce platforms, + moodle (learning platform/course management system).

What I like about them is their way of giving back to the community. They offer 50% discounts for students, and their data centers are pretty eco-friendly.

Inmotion hosting features

Support

24/7 Premier Support is available to all hosting plans and is done through phone, email, and live chat. Online tutorials and a community-based Q&A is available as well. Reviews are mostly positive when it comes to their customer support system. Their customers stated that they have quick response times and their representatives are knowledgeable when it comes to solving both easy and complex problems.

Speed

SSDs are used with its unique processes that makes your website load faster as opposed to using traditional mechanical drives. They have Max Speed Zones on both East and West Coasts of the USA (not Canada). These are specifically located in Los Angeles, California and Herndon, Virginia.

Although storage and bandwidth is unlimited, CPU, RAM, and other factors that might affect the performance of your website is undisclosed. You might have unlimited bandwidth, but if you reach your memory and CPU’s limit, you might not be able to accommodate all viewers trying to access your website.

Hosting Plans

PlanPrice / MonthWebsitesDisk SpaceExtras
CoreUSD $2.492100GBFree SSL
LaunchUSD $4.99UnlimitedUnlimitedFree domain
PowerUSD $4.99UnlmitedUnlimitedAdvanced Caching
ProUSD $12.99UnlmitedUnlimitedAdvanced Caching, Dedicated IP

Pros

  • High-quality services
  • Lots of options
  • Good support for apps/CMSs

Cons

  • Expensive
  • No servers in Canada

11. Dreamhost

About

DreamHost review

DreamHost logo

Website: www.dreamhost.com
Price:
 $7.95 (USD)
Disk space: Unlimited
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • ~100ms Load Time
  • WordPress optimized
  • Free site transfer for WordPress sites
  • Unlimited disk space
  • Automatic daily backups
  • Free domain
  • Free SSL
  • 24/7 in-house support
  • 97-day money-back guarantee

Dreamhost has a really good reputation, and with good reason. All the hosting products are solid, their support on point, and their server nice and speedy. They also don’t outsource support which is always a big win in our book. Ease of use is another thing Dreamhost is known for, as they’ve custom-built a control panel for their customers… it’s very user-friendly.

As for hosting solutions, they offer shared hosting, WordPress hosting, cloud hosting, VPS, and dedicated hosting. They also have a pretty neat website builder to save you costs in hiring a web designer, depending on how basic your design needs are of course.

The only downsides would be the lack of data centers in Canada, and the cost… which you have to pre-pay for 3 years if you want the cheapest rate. It’s not ideal.

Dreamhost Support

Support

Various options for support is made available by DreamHost through a Knowledge Base, Forum, System Status Page, Online Live Chat, Email Support, and Ticket Submission. The last three modes of support are available 24/7. They have no telephone support as of the moment.

Reviews of their customer support system are amazing. They garnered positive reviews with their helpful and knowledgeable representatives. It takes less than a minute to get to a representative to talk to you on live chat. And that’s not it. They were also able to provide useful links to help troubleshoot the problem.

Speed

DreamHost utilizes solid-state drives (SSDs) as opposed to traditional mechanical drives. When you use the former, your website loads faster compared to using the latter. Data centers are not available in Canada. They are located in Ashburn, Viriginia, Portland, Oregon, Irvine, California, and Los Angeles, California.

The company doesn’t offer much when it comes to speeding up your website. You have to do the manual tweaking yourself to get your website to load faster.

Hosting Plans

PlanPrice / MonthWebsitesDisk Space
Shared StarterUSD $2.59150GB
Shared UnlimitedUSD $3.95UnlimitedUnlimited

Pros

  • Good reputation
  • Quality services
  • In-house support

Cons

  • More expensive
  • No servers in Canada

12. Bluehost

About

BlueHost review

BlueHost logo

URL: www.bluehost.com
Price: USD $2.95
Disk space: 50 GB
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • ~100-400ms Load Time (TTFB)
  • 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
  • 24/7 Phone and Email Support
  • Free SSL
  • Free Domain Name
  • 75+ Apps Supported
  • Free Site Transfer
  • 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Bluehost is another EIG owned web host. They definitely went through a rough patch for a few years, but they seem to be working hard on cleaning up their image and hosting products. Overall, they’re pretty reliable and definitely have the experience behind them to prove to the world they’re a force to be reckoned with. They host a LOT of sites, we’ll need to re-evaluate them soon to see if we can bump them up our list.

They do offer a 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re not happy with their services. As for hosting plans, they offer shared hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated hosting, WordPress hosting, and VPS. No servers in Canada though.

Bluehost features

Support

BlueHost gives you a Knowledge Base, Video Tutorials, Live Chat, Ticket Submission, and Telephone Support. They are available 24/7. Reviews regarding BlueHost’ customer support service were mostly negative. It takes a long time for them to troubleshoot even simple problems. They are painfully slow when it comes to replying to questions and it seems like their customer support representatives are outsourced to other countries who speak English as a second language.

Speed

Performance (including speed) of their cheapest Shared Hosting plan is undisclosed. It only states that the said plan has “Standard” Performance. According to their support representative, Standard Performance means you are given 25GB of RAM and your website will load within 2-3 seconds.

Upon research on their knowledge base, you can have more CPU, memory, and resources for USD 25.99 per month. However, their Pro Package is labeled as “High Performance” wherein it has 80% fewer accounts per server which allow it to use more resources per account. With this package comes increased speed and power due to fewer users. Data centers are located in Utah, USA. Sadly, there are no data centers in Canada.

Pros

  • Experienced
  • Competitive prices
  • Decent for WordPress sites

Cons

  • Rocky reputation
  • No servers in Canada

How to choose a Canadian web hosting service?

Whether you’re working on a web redesign, a complete re-brand, or simply launching a new site, you’ll certainly encounter some roadblocks. Getting your website up and operating the way you want it can be really satisfying, but there will be a lot of hard work involved on the way.

Website builders can partially help out here btw, they’re a good alternative to hosting and designing your own site as they do a lot of the leg work for you. Check out our comparison of the best website builders for Canada if you’re interested.

website creation

When it comes to website hosting in Canada, there are a lot of web hosting types you can choose from before you can get your website up and running. However, that is unfortunately not the last tough decision you will have to make. After determining the web hosting type that fits your needs, you’ll need to compare specific features.

Btw we’ve also done this research for Australian web hosting providersNew Zealand web hostingweb hosting in SingaporeUK web hostingcheap web hosting India, & even web hosting Ireland.

In addition to getting your website designed and built (using a custom CMS, or a common one like WordPress, for which you might be better off researching the best Canadian WordPress hosting), you’re also going to need to decide where and how you want it hosted.

What are the types of web hosting?

What is Shared Hosting?

Shared hosting is one of the most popular web hosting types for smaller-sized websites and projects, as it’s classified as cheap Canadian web hosting. Some smaller projects include small businesses, blogs, personal websites, and more. The way this cheap web hosting type works is by a provider offering space on the same server to multiple different users.

What is VPS Hosting?

This hosting type gives you access to a Virtual Private Server. VPS hosting has a lot in common with shared hosting but comes with fewer limitations and more freedom when it comes to its server space. The perfect middle point between the cheap shared hosting, and expensive dedicated server hosting, VPS hosting gives you a portion of a server space separated from the rest of the server space that other users will be using, so you can use your server space unaffected by other users’ websites.

What is Dedicated Server Hosting?

Do you have a bigger website that you are looking to find a web hosting solution for? If so, dedicated server hosting might be the ideal choice for you. Giving the user access to an entire server all to themselves, this is a web hosting option most often chosen by much larger websites that store a lot of information and generate a much higher amount of traffic.

What is Reseller Hosting?

Reseller hosting refers to a type of web hosting in which a web developer purchases a significant amount of server space to resell to their clients that they develop websites for. This is ideal for clients who have a web developer taking care of their website for them, as it gives the developer more control to be able to ensure the website is functioning just as it should.

Hosting Research

When comparing the many web hosting providers you can sign up with online, here are some of the factors you’ll want to consider:

Does server location matter in web hosting?

Believe it or not, the physical location of the server influences the load times of your website. The closer the server is geographically to the users trying to access your website, the more quickly they’ll be able to use it.

However, if the closest server to you or the users you expect to be trying to access your website is a significantly underpowered one, it’s best to find the closest one to you that has a reasonable amount of resources and reliability.

server location map

In summary, as long as the server is close-ish, or in, Canada (and it’s a decent server), you’ll be fine! It really doesn’t matter if you’re looking for city-specific services like web hosting in Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver… the speed difference will be negligible.

How much disk space do they offer?

The last thing you want is to sign up for a web hosting company only to discover that it does not supply the storage space that your website requires, especially if you intend to run an e-commerce site.

Before you sign up for anything, make sure the storage space a provider provides with the plan you’re interested in fits your site’s needs. Most people will be fine with 10GB.

What is the uptime of the web host?

It’s important for your website to be accessible to your users at all hours of the day and night – that’s what you’re paying for, after all. To accomplish that, web providers strive to offer the best uptime statistics possible. We started tracking both overall uptime and response times for the major hosting providers on our website host status page.

Look up some customer testimonials for the provider you’re considering to find the real experience that others have gotten from their services considering uptime.

How fast are their servers?

Aside from the actual location of the server, the way web hosts configure their servers also has a massive impact on loading speeds.

Server speed

Factors that impact overall performance and speed are the allocated CPU resources and memory each account gets, how many websites a host allows per server, how their server stack looks with regards to PHP (PHP 7+ is a must these days), server-side caching, and more (have a look at our SiteGround vs HostGator comparison for an example of how much loading times can differ when you have a proper server config).

The terminology might be a bit too technical, but the main things to look for would be CPU and memory resource allocation + allowed domains per server.

Having a speedy site is also important for SEO purposes, as Google has said it’s one of their ranking factors!

What is a CDN (Content Delivery Network)?

A CDN is a massive network of servers all around the world that carry a cached version of your website, the main reason to have a CDN attached to your site is to maximise loading speeds no matter where the visitors are coming from.

For example: If a visitor from France wants to browse the site, then the closest server or node to that location will serve the website, rather than the server in Canada doing all the work. Other benefits of having a CDN include protection against DDOS attacks and reducing your origin servers’ resource load.

hosting graphic

A lot of web hosts have to option to integrate quite seamlessly with CloudFlare, which offers a free CDN. Definitely something worth checking out.

What are SSL Certificates?

SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer, it’s the “s” in https, also visible through the padlock in most modern browsers, showing that the site you’re visiting is secure. SSL certificates are used to encrypt the transfer of data between your site and the visitors. At the time of typing this, having an SSL certificate is an absolute must for every website (not just e-commerce shops). It makes browsers trust your site, making it more likely to purchase something if that’s the goal of your site. A good Canadian web host should offer free SSL certificates.

In fact, the moment we see a hosting provider that charges money for a basic SSL certificate, their overall score takes a massive dive. There are different types of SSL certificates too, like Extended Validation (EV SSL), Organization Validated (OV SSL) and Domain Validated (DV SSL). DV SSL is the basic version.

How is the customer support of the web host?

Support is an essential element of any service, whether it is web hosting or not. However, web hosting is something that can get extremely tricky if you’re not well-versed and experienced in that area, making support even more essential. You should always ensure that any provider you sign up with offers live chat and phone support to clients, and you might even want to keep an eye out for 24/7 support so you can get assistance whenever you might need it.

How often do I need to back up my site?

You want to ensure that the information you keep stored on your website is safe and secure always. Therefore, backups are critical.

web hosts

Most web providers will regularly back up your information and store it for you, so it’s wise to look at how often they do this and how they go about recovering your data if the need were to arise. Also, check how much it would cost to re-deploy an older version of your site, sometimes it’s free, sometimes it’s not.

Ideally, you should be looking at daily or weekly backups.

How much bandwidth do I get?

The bandwidth of your website will have a lot to do with how it performs. Whether your website is small or large, you want to make certain that it has access to the resources it needs to provide the best user experience possible. Look up the bandwidth your website will be allotted with the provider you are considering to make sure it is adequate.

How many sites do I get?

Look up how many domains the provider you are considering will allow you to host on the server space you are paying for. Whether you think you are going to want to host more than one website or not, it’s always good to have the freedom to do so should you decide to in the future.

And that’s it, it might seem overwhelming to cover every single point, but just take it one step at a time. Maybe even create a spreadsheet and log all the specs for the best Canadian web hosting companies, so you’ve got an easy overview.

Best Domain Hosting for Canada

Before we get into this, let’s clear something up, while a lot of people are looking and asking around for the top domain hosting services, domain hosting isn’t actually a thing. The term is a combination of “domain name”, and “web hosting”. What most people mean by domain hosting, is generally the setup of a website, and its URL or domain name.

As we’ve already reviewed our picks of the top web hosting services for Canada, we’ll talk about the best domain registrars from now on.

What is a domain name?

Domain names are the alphanumeric aliases used to access websites. Without domain names, accessing websites would only be possible by typing their IP addresses in the browser bar (example: 192.168.2.10). Luckily for us, domain names were invented to replace IP addresses and make it a lot easier to browse the web. So for example: 192.168.2.10 could become Google.com, how awesome is that. This means that whatever domain name you buy, the name is actually a mask for the underlying IP address.

What are Domain Registrars and Registries?

Domain name registrars are companies that are allowed to manage the reservation of internet domain names and assign IP addresses to those domain names. Registrars have to be accredited by a generic top-level domain (gTLD) registry or a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registry.

Registries are top-level companies that have to delegate the sales of domain registrations. Whenever a domain name is sold to a customer, the registrar has to notify the registry to reserve the domain (and a LOT of them are sold every single day, just check out the internet usage stats resource we created for some insane numbers).

domain name registrars

A lot of hosts are also resellers of domain name registrars, meaning that you can sign up for web hosting and grab a domain name from the same company, which makes it very easy to set up your website.

Canadian Web Hosting FAQs

How much does web hosting cost in Canada?

Hosting your website in Canada can be more expensive than in other countries. The cost of web hosting in Canada varies depending on the company, the features you need, and the amount of storage and bandwidth you require. Shared hosting plans start at around $3 per month, while VPS and dedicated hosting plans start at about $50 per month.

There are a few free hosting companies to be found as well, though we generally don’t recommend it.

What is the best domain host in Canada?

HostPapa is a leading domain host in Canada. They offer reliable, affordable, and easy-to-use domain hosting services. Their intuitive drag-and-drop site builder makes it easy to create a professional website in minutes—without any coding required!

HostPapa offers over 700 top-level domains. They make it easy for you to find the perfect web address for your business or personal website.

HostPapa also offers free 24/7 support and unlimited storage space and bandwidth so you can focus on creating a successful website that meets your unique needs.

What is the best web hosting provider in Canada?

HostPapa is the best web hosting provider in Canada, they have been in business since 2006 and offer various web hosting services, including shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers. HostPapa also offers a free domain name when you sign up for a year-long web hosting plan.

One factor that makes HostPapa stand out from the competition is its customer service. HostPapa has a team of experts who are available 24/7 to help you with any issues. 

How to host your website in Canada?

  1. The first step is to register a domain name. You can register a name through a registrar such as GoDaddy or Namecheap.
  2. Once you’ve registered your domain name, you’ll need to find a web hosting provider. You’ll find many different providers, so do your research to find one that fits your needs.
  3. Once you’ve chosen a provider, you’ll need to purchase web hosting services. This service will give you access to a server where you can host your website.