this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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Hey! It's my first post!

I have a few websites that are hosted in the USA. I'm going to move them all to Canadian hosts. I'm looking for recommendations for hosting companies in Canada that are owned by Canadians. I've look at a few but first hand experience is always welcome.

Most of my sites are just basic html/css/javascript but one of them is a wordpress storefront. I specifically need the Wordpress site to be as fast as possible - a difficult task for wordpress, I know.

Also, glad to see this community! Great stuff!

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[–] g3ek@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

You should look at these tutorials blog post I’ve created.

One is about how to host multiple website in our cloud. It is perfect to get an idea how easy it is to do it in our Canadian Cloud.

Deploy multiple website on CloudPanel on KeepSec Cloud

We also have another blog post on how to optimize resources in CloudPanel to further help you optimize the speed.

How to optimize CloudPanel resource

Let me know if you find this useful!

[–] Echofox@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 days ago

Those are some well made tutorials!

[–] Anysia@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 days ago

Have you checked out easydns.ca?

[–] jnb@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 days ago (2 children)

If you're fine to either get your hands dirty, or a kind friend's, check out Xenyth Hosting

[–] Echofox@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 days ago

my hands are filthy so that's fine

[–] GameGod@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I signed for Xenyth a couple months ago and it took them 8 business days from the time that I signed up, to the time that they "approved" my account and I could log in and provision services. I can't imagine this company will still be around in a few years.

Honestly, this entire thread is depressing. None of these companies compete with US or European cloud providers. They either have websites designed in 1992, are IT service companies masquerading as PaaS, seem to be poorly run, or their pricing is terrible.

[–] jnb@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

They run a Tier 2 networking service, including peering with a lot of big exchanges. They'll be around for a while... And have been so far...

Hetzner does the same shit for ID verification/provisioning, it's all related to anti spam and anti malicious use.

I host at home but use Xenyth as a reverse proxy, that's honestly what many people who are comfortable to run their own server should do; protect your home IP.

[–] GameGod@lemmy.ca 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, but Hetzner's physical address on their website isn't a PO box...

[–] jnb@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

What a weird thing to focus on, are you planning to go visit your VPS in person?

GoCode is the parent company, and you can see they offer colo in an Equinox datacenter. I imagine this might be a one person contracting team that uses a PO Box for home address privacy (as I do myself for my business purposes)

[–] GameGod@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

You opened the door by making the comparison with Hetzner. What rationale is there to an 8 business day response to a new sign up? They're not running a police background check, lol. If you don't want fraud, you take a credit card up front and preauth it. It just tells me they're not serious about business and it tells me that if something goes wrong with my services with them, I can expect no response for a week. It's a ridiculous way to do business, and I can't imagine trusting them with anything I cared about because of that.

Equinix is legit and Xenyth's actual offerings and the way they write about their network + colo is what made me consider them in the first place, because they do seem competent. But if they're not paying attention to sales leads, and they're trying to compete with AWS/GCloud/Azure, good luck...

[–] AlolanVulpix@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Here's a great company! Peaceworks Technology Solutions

  • Living Wage Certified
  • B Corp Certified
[–] Echofox@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago

I hadn't come across this one when I was searching around, thank you! They look cool!

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] Echofox@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago

This might be my choice. I'm going to do more reading.

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

Yes, been using them for years. No real complaints. They are very quick to get back if you need support.

[–] PistolPete@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Have a look at CanSpace.ca. I transferred my domains from GoDaddy last year.

They have been reliable and I feel good that I am supporting a Canadian shop.

When I needed to contact CanSpace support, they were responsive, friendly and knowledgeable.

My requirements are basic, so I can't comment on WordPress performance. With this being said, my experience with everything else for me has been awesome. No regrets!

For any others considering making the switch, do your homework but they're a good option.

[–] Echofox@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago

At this point I've decided to migrate away from WordPress. I should have a while ago.

CanSpace.ca looks really cool, thanks for suggesting it!

[–] Greg@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Have you considered hosting from your home? Or do you have uptime SLOs? I host from home on Bell and I maintain 99.9% uptime.

[–] Echofox@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago

I have considered this! And I used to back in the day! I haven't completely ruled it out, and I probably could cobble together a Frankenstein box, though I'm not sure the performance would be enough (the only extra MOBO/CPU I have is an ancient Core2Duo). Also, I wonder if the electricity cost would be more than $10/month. I should do some math..

[–] Windex007@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've worked with hostpapa on very small projects years ago, so I can't speak to their capacity to operate on high powered commercial projects... But they've been around for a long time,at least. My experience with them was good!

[–] Echofox@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The sites I run don't get too much traffic, but performance is still important. When I looked into hostpapa I saw a lot of bad reviews online. You can't believe everything you read, though it's enough to keep me cautious.

[–] Windex007@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I looked into this, because I was curious.

Sounds like the common thread in all the complaints revolve around HostPapa being unable to handle the constant barrage of pen-testing that a WordPress site gets exposed to, and trying to alleviate by forcing WP sites off shared hosting.

So, ya, if you're running a WP site, would not recommend. By my read, it's probably a legitimate issue and users are probably not overreacting.

I've never ran anything aside from bespoke PHP on hostpapa, and I had no issues with that... But honestly my read of the WP situation would scare me off HostPapa for sure.

[–] Echofox@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

Sounds like I need to migrate away from wordpress. Which I kind of already knew.

[–] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 week ago

My experience as well. Other hosting providers as well though. WP is the big target. I haven't recommended it for a decade.

[–] LimpRimble@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Which ISP service does lemmy.ca use?

[–] Ashwag@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 days ago

They're colocation in a BC datacenter. So likely not what you're looking for unless you have hardware to use, and just are looking for rack space.

[–] MapleMan@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 days ago

Well their name servers point to CloudFlare based on a quick DNS lookup on whois.com

[–] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Was there anything wrong with the ones you've looked at?

[–] Echofox@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Probably nitpicks, but I found a lot of the ones I came across charged an extra $50/year for a LetsEncrypt SSL cert which rubs me wrong since LetsEncrypt is free. A few others I found claimed to be Canadian and even had their offices in Canada but were ultimately American owned, which is a dealbreaker for me.

I do have a shortlist of a few, but I want to be thorough since whoever I pick I'll probably be with indefinitely.

[–] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think I have LetsEncrypt at no extra charge with mine (zenutech.ca) They're based in New Brunswick and as far as I know they're Canadian owned.

[–] Echofox@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago

I hadn't found that one yet! Thank you!

[–] sik0fewl@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago

Someone had mentioned Websavers.ca in a previous thread.