The Benefits of Hosting in Canada VS Hosting in the U.S

Canadian business owners should host their website on Canadian soil.  I’ve seen many businesses in Canada hosting their website on a server outside of Canada and I don’t understand why.  Hosting in Canada with a company that has servers in Canada will not only get you listed higher in search engines but also means that you’re bound by Canadian Privacy Laws which makes a big difference compared to hosting in the U.S for example.

• Protected by Canadian privacy laws (No NSA or data snooping to worry about)
• Faster website loading since your website loads from a Canadian data center
• You’ll be supporting a Canadian business
• You will likely have better SEO and organic search results on Google.ca

Which Canadian Web Hosting Company To Choose?

There are far more hosting providers in the U.S and Europe to choose from but Canadians do have a handful of great choices when it comes to small business web hosting.  We get tons of feedback from our readers who have tried various hosting companies in Canada and I’ll do a quick review of the two top web hosting companies to choose from if you have a small business.  My goal is to help you find a reliable yet affordable company to help you grow your Internet business.  Whether you have an e-commerce store or an informational website, having an online presence is vital to any new business.  No matter which web host you choose you want to make sure their support is exceptional.  There are too many providers who outsource their support so I want to focus on two companies who have a dedicated in-house team so you can get the help you need when launching your website.

Canadian VPS Hosting Review

VPS stands for ‘Virtual Private Server’.  A VPS means that you will get a virtual slice of a server with it’s own operating system.  You’ll have root level access which means you’ll literally have direct access to install anything you want on your server.  For example you can install any version of PHP or MySQL you want.  It’s your own virtual environment and for a business looking for an affordable hosting solution a VPS is a great start.  It gives you the security you need but at a fraction of the cost of having a dedicated server.

Hands down I’d have to say HostHero.ca is the best option for Canadian Business VPS Hosting.  HostHero is Canadian owned and operated with servers located in Toronto.  They offer cloud based VPS hosting which is a twist on traditional VPS hosting.  Normally a VPS is one physical server with hard drives in the physical machine.  With HostHero’s cloud VPS plans your website loads from SAN storage meaning the hard drives are not housed in the physical server but in a totally separate server.  Instead of having 4 drives load your content your content will load from over 20 different drives.  They also use fiber channel hard drives instead of SATA hard drives which give you MUCH better performance.

HostHero VPS plans come with cPanel and WHM control panels.  If you’re familiar with cPanel then you’ll feel right at home.  If you’ve never used cPanel then you’re in for a treat.  It’s one of the most widely used hosting control panels with a simple and easy user-friendly interface.  With cPanel you can create email accounts on the fly, upload and manage your website and even view analytical data of your traffic.

HostHero offers customers the ability to pay monthly which is great for business that want to test their services without committing long term.  If you’re happy with the service you can opt for a longer billing cycle to save some money.

HostHero VPS Plans and Pricing Review

Plans start at $39.95/month and go up to $124.95/month based on the resources you need.  The cheapest VPS plan comes with 10GB of RAID protected disk space and 100GB of bandwidth.  HostHero has 3 backbone bandwidth carriers which gives you triple redundancy when it comes to network transfer.  Personally I always recommend a VPS with 1GB of memory and that plan would run you $49.95/month but includes unlimited bandwidth.  For the price point and specs it’s a no-brainer for small sized business hosting for Canadians.  You’ll have your own private server hosted on Canadian IP’s and in a Canadian data center.

Canadian Support that’s in-house not outsourced!

Yes you read that right.  HostHero staff all work out of their Canadian office which is a major plus.  You’ll get tailored support from a Canadian business who don’t outsource their staff.  Everything from sales and support to billing is all handled by their staff in their Toronto office.  I can’t tell you how much of a difference it makes when you get to speak with someone who works directly at the company versus someone who works somewhere at a remote call center.  If you’re reading this I’m sure you’d agree that having direct in-house support is probably one of the biggest challenges when searching for a host.  Far too many hosts outsource their support but not HostHero.

Keeping Your Data in Canada

With all the reason mentioned above I have to say that privacy and search engines rankings are most important.  The U.S Patriot Act introduced in 2001 allows the United States government to access the data of businesses with little reason.  We’re seeing more and more people choose Canadian hosting providers for their businesses even those outside of Canada.  If your website data in stored on U.S soil you’re bound by the Patriot Act.  Without getting in to too much detail, if your business is located in Canada then it just makes sense to keep your data hosted on Canadian soil.

Search engines like Google check to see where a website is hosted physically and will base their search results accordingly.  If you have a Canadian presence then you’ll want to host on an IP address on a Canadian server.  For example if you own a furniture store in Vancouver and someone searches for your keywords on Google.ca will be more likely to land on your website.  SEO is a crucial part of having a web presence so making the right choice on where to host your website is very important.

At the end of the day you need a reliable an affordable web host and HostHero is the best choice for Business Hosting in Canada.   Give them a try and be sure to let us know how they ranked in terms of hosting your businesses website.