5 Best Web Hosting in Canada

If you’re launching a website for a Canadian audience, it’s best to get your hosting from a Canadian hosting provider or a web host that has server locations in Canada as well. Because we’re experts in web hosting, we’ve researched and selected the best web hosting companies in Canada that deserve your attention.

Below you can read our quick reviews of these companies, but first, let’s consider the advantages of having your servers located in Canada if your website is targeting or addressing a predominantly Canadian audience.

Why Choose a Canadian Web Host?

If your website’s main audience is Canadian, there are a few arguments in favor of hosting with a provider located there:

• Faster connection & response times: If your servers are located closer to your target audience, you can enjoy better response times than having your servers overseas;
• Support: Buying web hosting from companies located in different time zones or different countries may come with different support work hours and support outsourced to countries that don’t speak very good English. This can put a damper on communication and solving issues in a timely manner;
• Industry-requirement: For some industries, it is a requirement to have servers located in the country where a company is operating its business;
• Legal disputes: In case of legal disputes, it’s easier to bring legal action against or mediate disputes among residents of the same country;
• Localization: Having localized services means paying in the currency of your country, enjoy services that are in compliance with country-specific legislation, and having access to support based in Canada;
• Green hosting: Reputable hosting companies in Canada are all committed to the environment and make efforts to be powered by clean energy.

Enjoying faster connections, having access to localized services and support are the main reasons why businesses or individuals whose websites target a Canadian audience will choose to have their website hosted at a Canadian web host.

If you’re curious about which web hosts are the best, read the reviews below about the top 5 web hosts in Canada:

GreenGeeks is a hosting company with a global presence, whose data centers are located in the United States, Europe, and of course Canada. As they name so eloquently suggests, this company is a green company committed to shrinking their environmental impact. They do so by replacing 3 times the amount of energy they use with wind power energy.

GreenGeeks allows customers to choose the data center they are provisioned in. Canadians can choose to be provisioned in the data center located in Montreal or Toronto.

Besides being an environmentally responsible platform for your website, GreenGeeks is also committed to exhilarating speed, enhanced security and reliability.

By using the latest in speed technology like SSD drives, customized in-house caching technology, free in-built CDN, fast web and database servers, and PHP 7 enabled on all servers, GreenGeeks can guarantee blazingly fast page loads.

Security-wise, they offer real-time security scanning, advanced clustered threat analysis, and proactive server monitoring allowing them to maintain a 99.9% uptime.

In terms of hosting plans prices kick off at $3.95/month for shared hosting, but VPS hosting, dedicated servers, WordPress hosting and reseller packages are also competitively priced and boast a great number of features like free domain registration, free website migration, free website builder, 24/7 support, free backups, cPanel/WHM license, 30-day money-back guarantee, superior security, etc.

GreenGeeks is an excellent choice for a Canadian website that values renewable energy, excellent hosting packages, and commitment to the latest and greatest in hosting solutions.

HostPapa is an independently-owned Canadian hosting company founded in 2006. Like GreenGeeks, they too are a green web host with data centers across the US and Canada.

This web hosts offers affordable hosting plans across multiple hosting categories including shared, WordPress, VPS and reseller hosting. They brand themselves as a hosting for beginners and small businesses that want a strong and reliable hosting partner.

Even though they are based in Canada, HostPapa is not afraid to target global markets as well. To this end, they offer multi-language support, enhanced SSD drives, CloudFlare CDN, 24/7 support, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and state-of-the-art data centers.

Automatic backups and malware scan, free SSL certificates, free website migration, 30-day no-risk guarantee are just some of the other hosting features you can enjoy at HostPapa.

Shared hosting packages can be purchased for as low as $3.95/month. Business shared hosting plans pack more resources than the starter package, but all plans in this tier feature free domain registration, cPanel control panel, access to 400+ apps, free one-on-one training, free Let’s Encrypt SSL, site builder, and free CDN.

We recommend HostPapa if you have no previous experience with hosting and website building as they’re a friendly and user-oriented company that aims to help establish and grow your online business.

HawkHost

Established in 2004, HawkHost is a global web host with 7 data centers across Europe, Asia, USA, and Canada.

HawkHost offers free migration services, SSD powered hosting, 99.9% uptime SLA, 24/7 support, and 30-day money-back guarantee. Their hosting portfolio includes shared, cloud, semi-dedicated servers, VPS and reseller accounts.

On the page of each respective plan, you’ll find a detailed description of the featured software and technical specifications of each plan.

Their entry-level shared hosting package is the most affordable, even compared to the other web hosts mentioned above, and the price starts off at $2.99/month. This plan is limited only with respect to disk space resources, which is capped at 10,000 MB. The other shared hosting plan, the Professional is much pricier at $7.99/month, but it comes with unlimited SSD disk space.

The next hosting category at HawkHost is cloud servers, which feature five different plans ranging from $5/month to $80/month. These plans come with full root access, are SSD powered and fully scalable. Semi-dedicated servers feature two plans, while VPS feature three plans.

While plans are competitively priced and resources are plentiful and scalable, cPanel is not included for free with each plan, and it’s only available at an extra fee. On the other hand, all plans feature free unlimited SSL certificates.

Whether you’re launching your first website or you’re looking to migrate to another host, HawkHost is a reliable and affordable choice.

OVHcloud

OVH Cloud is a business hosting provider with server locations across Europe and the East Coast of Canada that specializes in hybrid-cloud hosting solutions. They’re targeting IT agencies and businesses and offer PCI compliant (PCI-DSS Level 1) hosting.

OVHCloud’s bare metal servers, private cloud and public cloud solutions are a great choice for any businesses looking to build a scalable, secure, and agile infrastructure that meets the challenges of their projects.

Bare metals servers are available from $249/month and they’re categorized according to certain objectives. For example, if you’re a game publisher looking for gaming servers, there’s a dedicated category for gaming server solutions. Other dedicated server families include Infrastructure, High-Availability, Storage, and GPU.

If you’re looking for solutions to meet enterprise-level workloads, OVHCloud’s hosted private cloud solutions offer physically isolated, single-tenant cloud environments with flexibility, operational consistency and excellent performance.

With public cloud solutions offered by OVHcloud, you’ll enjoy the highest availability, security, and performance. Resources are 100% yours 100% of the time, and you will use 100% of your resources without overallocation. Whether you’re looking for pay-as-you-go unlimited cloud storage, archive storage, block storage, or public cloud instances, OVH has you covered.

This host does not offer hosting solutions for novices and their hosting solutions are designed for high-end customers looking for utmost performance and security.

iWeb.com

Based in Montreal and 98% powered by hydroelectricity, iWeb is another green business hosting solution offering dedicated and cloud hosting. Besides Montreal, iWeb has a global presence that extends to Europe, Asia and the Americas.

Single processor dedicated servers start at $110/month, but you can choose from as many as 19 dedicated server configurations including dual processor servers, or servers built for performance or storage. Among these, you will find PCI compliant servers, servers with SSD storage, and unmetered bandwidth servers.

iWeb’s redundant data centers allow for 100% power and network SLA. In terms of security, DDoS protection, remote backup and firewall options are available.

Pay-as-you-go cloud server options are available with Windows or Linux and SSD storage, prices start at $0.04/h.

Besides hosting, iWeb also provides storage solutions (networked storage, block storage, backup storage, and cloud backup) as well as network services (CDN, firewalls, security) and server management.

iWeb’s hosting solutions are suitable for IT professionals, businesses and enterprises.

Conclusion

No matter what your hosting needs may be – anything from simple shared hosting solutions to cloud computing solutions – the hosting companies reviewed in this article are the best in their respective categories. They’re all green energy powered hosts with a global presence and a varied catalogue of services that go beyond traditional hosting, and which can very well compete with other leading US and European hosting brands.

If you’re looking for hosting in Canada, make sure to check them out!