Website hosting cost in Canada: the renewal price is the real one.
A basic hosting plan from a host that bills in Canadian dollars costs C$3.89 to C$5.49 a month at sign-up, read off three hosts’ own pricing pages on 2026-09-26. Once the first term ends, the same three plans cost C$4.99 to C$16.99 a month. You pay the second number for most of a website’s life.
Most of what ranks for this question lists hosting types in US dollars. This page puts four published plans side by side, does the three-year sum, and lists what a hosting bill never covers, which is usually the larger cost.
Updated 2026-09-26
How much does website hosting cost? Four published prices, read the same day
Three hosts from the first page of results that bill in Canadian dollars, and one platform a developer may deploy a hand-coded site to. Every figure is the host’s own, read on 2026-09-26. The third column is the one the headline price leaves out.
| Entry plan | Sign-up price | What that price needs | After the first term |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web Hosting Canada, Go | C$3.89 a month | 36 months paid up front: C$140.04 on day one | C$6.99 a month, the host's current 3-year renewal price |
| CanSpace, Starter | C$4.99 a month | The 3-year cycle: C$179.64 | C$4.99 a month. CanSpace states the sign-up price is the renewal price |
| GoDaddy, Web Hosting Economy | C$5.49 a month | The first 1-year term | Shown on the same card against C$16.99 a month |
| Vercel, Pro | US$20 a month platform fee, about C$28.29 | Billed monthly, one deploying seat included | The same fee. Usage past the included US$20 credit is billed on top |
The plans are not identical, so read the table as prices rather than a ranking. GoDaddy’s Economy covers one website with 25 GB of storage. WHC’s Go covers a single website. CanSpace’s Starter lists 5 GB of storage and five domains.
WHC prints the rule behind its own renewal figure, and it is worth reading once because every introductory price works the same way: “Renewal pricing shown is the current 3-year renewal pricing and may change at any time. Shorter billing cycles are available during checkout.” So the renewal price you pay depends on how long you renew for, and the one on the sales page is the longest cycle.
“Unlimited” carries a footnote too. On WHC’s page it reads “Unlimited as it applies to regular small business use, in accordance with our Acceptable Use Policy.” That is a reasonable rule, and it means the word describes ordinary use rather than a promise.
How much does it cost to host a website for three years?
A sign-up price tells you what month one costs. What you need is the cost over the time you keep the site, so here are the three Canadian-dollar plans over three years, before tax.
- WHC Go: C$140.04.Paid on day one for 36 months, which is where the C$3.89 comes from (36 × C$3.89).
- CanSpace Starter: C$179.64.Also a three-year term (36 × C$4.99).
- GoDaddy Economy: C$473.64, if it renews at the C$16.99 shown on its card. Year one is C$65.88 (12 × C$5.49), and years two and three are C$203.88 each (12 × C$16.99).
Over three years the order matches the sign-up prices. Run it to six and it changes: WHC’s second term, renewed on the same three-year cycle at C$6.99, is C$251.64, which makes six years C$391.68. CanSpace’s flat price makes six years C$359.28. A host that holds its price overtakes one with a lower introductory rate once the site outlives the first term.
Two things the monthly figure hides. The three-year prices are paid up front, so “C$3.89 a month” is a way of describing a C$140.04 payment. And a lower introductory rate is only worth having if you would have kept the site on that host for the whole term anyway.
What a hosting bill does not cover
Six costs sit next to the hosting plan and are easy to miss when you compare two sales pages. The last one is the largest, and it is not a server cost at all.
The domain, after year one
WHC includes one domain registration for a year when a hosting plan is prepaid for at least a year, and its footnote adds: “Domain will renew at the then-current price.” Whichever host you use, register the domain in your own name, so moving hosts never means asking permission.
The security certificate, sometimes
GoDaddy's Economy card reads “Free SSL Certificate, 1 year”, while an answer lower on the same page says its AutoSSL keeps a certificate renewed for cPanel sites while the hosting stays current. When one page says both, get the answer for your plan in writing. A basic certificate does not have to cost anything at all: Let's Encrypt, run by the nonprofit Internet Security Research Group, issues them free.
Tax
Where a seller adds HST, Ontario's rate is 13% according to the Canada Revenue Agency, so a C$5.49 month reads C$6.20 on the invoice. Vercel states its prices are in US dollars and exclude GST and other taxes. For any host, the checkout page shows whether the price you saw included tax.
The exchange rate
A US-dollar host can charge you a different Canadian amount every month. At the Bank of Canada's rate of 1.4145 for 2026-09-25, a US$20 fee was about C$28.29. A plan priced in Canadian dollars removes that line from the budget entirely.
Email, beyond the basics
Shared plans usually bundle mailboxes, with limits worth reading. WHC's Go plan lists one email account of up to 1 GB and up to 50 outgoing emails an hour. Enough for one person replying to enquiries, and far too few for a newsletter.
The work
Updates to WordPress, its plugins and its theme. Backups you have actually restored once. Watching for the site going down, and someone to call when it does. None of it is on a C$4 invoice, and skipping it is the usual reason a site that worked at launch stops working later.
Shared, WordPress, VPS or dedicated: what each type starts at
The first four starting prices come from one host’s product menu, WHC’s, on the same day, so the steps between them compare like with like. They are advertised starting prices, which means introductory ones.
| Type | Starts at | What it is, and who it suits |
|---|---|---|
| Shared hosting | C$3.89 a month | Your site shares one server with other customers' sites. Fine for a brochure site with ordinary traffic. |
| Managed WordPress | C$3.99 a month | Shared or similar hardware, set up for WordPress, usually with automatic core updates. Plugins and themes are still somebody's job. |
| VPS (virtual private server) | C$18.50 a month | A slice of a server with resources reserved for you. You or your developer run the software on it. |
| Dedicated server | C$149.99 a month | A whole machine. A small business website almost never needs one. |
| Website builder | Inside the builder's plan | There is no separate hosting bill, and no separate hosting to buy: the builder hosts the site or nobody does. |
| Platform for coded sites | Free for personal use; US$20 a month on Vercel Pro | Where a developer deploys a site built in code. Read the free tier's terms before a business site goes on it (below). |
For a local business with a brochure site and a contact form, the bottom of the ladder is enough. The jump from shared hosting to a VPS buys resources, and it also hands you, or whoever you pay, the job of running the server. Buy it when the site hits a real limit on shared hosting.
Can a business website use free hosting?
Sometimes, and the terms decide it rather than the technology. Vercel is a clear example because it publishes its free tier’s rules in plain words. Its fair use guidelines say: “Hobby teams are restricted to non-commercial personal use only. All commercial usage of the platform requires either a Pro or Enterprise plan.”
Then it defines commercial usage, and the definition is wider than the word suggests. It covers any deployment used “for the purpose of financial gain of anyone involved in any part of the production of the project, including a paid employee or consultant writing the code.” Its examples include “Advertising the sale of a product or service” and “Receiving payment to create, update, or host the site”.
So a business website on a free Hobby account is outside those terms twice: the site advertises a service, and somebody was paid to build it. If a developer hands you a finished site and a hosting bill of zero, ask which plan it is on. On that platform a business site belongs on Pro, at US$20 a month, about C$28.29 at the Bank of Canada’s 2026-09-25 rate.
Other free tiers have their own terms, and this page has not checked them. Read the page that says who a free plan is for before a business site goes on it.
Does a Canadian business need Canadian servers?
PIPEDA, the federal private-sector privacy law, does not require them. Two of the Canadian hosts on the first page sell their Canadian data centres as PIPEDA-compliant. That describes where the data sits, and it is easy to misread as a requirement. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada says in its cross-border guidelines that “PIPEDA does not prohibit organizations in Canada from transferring personal information to an organization in another jurisdiction for processing”, and that “PIPEDA does not distinguish between domestic and international transfers of data.”
The same guidelines say your business stays accountable for the information wherever it is processed. So under PIPEDA the question is which provider holds the data and on what terms, wherever its servers are.
Canadian hosting is still a reasonable thing to prefer. You pay in the currency you earn in, and a customer's contract may ask for it. If a contract you have signed, or a rule in your sector, requires Canadian residency, that document decides the question and this page does not. For a local trade with a contact form, the law does not force the choice.
How much should you pay someone to host your website?
Split the question in two, because it is two purchases. The server is the cheap part and the prices are above. The care is the expensive part, and it is labour: updates, backups, monitoring, fixes, and a person who answers when something breaks.
If you will do the care yourself, a C$4 to C$6 plan is everything you need, and paying more buys you nothing. That means applying updates every month, restoring a backup once to prove it works, and renewing the domain before it lapses.
If you will not, you are buying the work, and you should compare offers on the work listed rather than on the server. Our Hosting & Care plan is $59 CAD a month, which is $708 a year, and most of that pays for work rather than a server. What our pricing page lists under it: fast managed hosting and SSL; monitoring, backups, updates and security; two content-edit requests a month; and priority support. On a new build it runs with the build for the first year, then it is cancel-anytime.
For a site you already have, the same plan is sold as WordPress maintenance services and covers WordPress, Squarespace and hand-coded sites. If you are pricing a new site as well, the build and the plan are added up over year one in what a website costs in Ottawa.
Six things to get in writing from any host
- The renewal price for the billing cycle you will actually renew on. WHC's published renewal is its 3-year price, and shorter cycles are priced differently at checkout.
- How much is paid on day one, and what you get back if you leave after the money-back window closes.
- What the domain renews at, and whose name the registration is in.
- Whether the security certificate renews by itself for as long as the hosting does.
- How often backups run, how long they are kept, and whether restoring one costs extra.
- Whether the price includes HST, and which currency the card is charged in.
A host that answers all six on its own pricing page has told you what the site will cost for as long as you keep it.
If you are working out whether your current hosting bill is fair, and if the site on it is the one you want, that is a free scoping call for web design in Ottawa or anywhere else in Canada. Call +1 (613) 383-5521 and ask.
Questions people ask next about hosting bills.
1How much does website hosting cost per year?
On the three Canadian-dollar entry plans above, the first year works out to C$46.68 at WHC, C$59.88 at CanSpace and C$65.88 at GoDaddy, before tax. After the first term the same plans run C$83.88 a year at WHC, C$59.88 at CanSpace, and C$203.88 at GoDaddy if Economy renews at the C$16.99 shown beside it. WHC's and CanSpace's first-year figures assume the three-year term that price requires, paid up front.
2How much does GoDaddy charge to host a website in Canada?
Read off GoDaddy's Canadian hosting page on 2026-09-26: Web Hosting Economy is C$5.49 a month for the first one-year term, shown against C$16.99. Deluxe, for up to ten websites, is C$7.49 against C$22.99, and Ultimate C$9.99 against C$29.99. Hosting for WordPress Basic is C$5.49 against C$21.99. Every one of those first prices is labelled for the first one-year term, so budget from the second number.
3Why is my hosting bill so much higher than when I signed up?
Almost certainly because the sign-up price was an introductory one that covered only your first billing cycle. WHC's footnote says so in plain words: “The initial discounted pricing applies to the first billing cycle for new online orders only and does not apply to renewals or upgrades.” Check which cycle you renewed on, too. WHC's published renewal figure is its three-year price, and shorter cycles are offered at checkout at prices of their own.
4Can I move my website to a cheaper host?
Usually, if the site is WordPress or hand-coded: the files and the database move, and the domain is pointed at the new server. Book it before the renewal date, not after, or you pay the new rate for a term you then abandon. A site built on a website builder is different, because the builder is the host. Moving means rebuilding somewhere else, which is a website decision, not a hosting one.
5Does cheap hosting make my site slower or hurt my Google ranking?
It can make it slower if the server is overloaded, and a slow page is a worse page for the people using it. But the price on the card is a poor predictor of speed in either direction, and no host sells a ranking. How the site is built, how heavy its images and scripts are, and whether its content answers the search do far more than the difference between a C$4 and a C$10 plan.
6What is included in your C$59 Hosting & Care plan?
What our pricing page lists, word for word: fast managed hosting and SSL; maintenance, meaning monitoring, backups, updates and security; content edits and small changes, two requests a month; and priority support. On a new build the plan runs with the build for its first year, then it is cancel-anytime. For a site you already have, the same plan covers WordPress, Squarespace and hand-coded sites.
Every third-party price on this page was read off the host's own page on the date shown, and each will move. The government rows are the sources for the privacy sentence, the Ontario HST rate and the one currency conversion. Nothing here is drawn from any client's account.
- Four hosts' published pricing pages
whc.ca/canadian-web-hosting, canspace.ca/web-hosting.html and godaddy.com/en-ca/hosting/web-hosting, read 2026-09-26, all in Canadian dollars; vercel.com/docs/plans/pro-plan and vercel.com/docs/limits/fair-use-guidelines, read the same day, in US dollars. Figures as published that day. Not linked, because this site does not link competitors' sales pages; the addresses are here so you can re-read them, and prices move.
- Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Guidelines for processing personal data across borders
Read 2026-09-26. Source of two sentences quoted on the hosting guide: “PIPEDA does not prohibit organizations in Canada from transferring personal information to an organization in another jurisdiction for processing”, and “PIPEDA does not distinguish between domestic and international transfers of data.”
- Canada Revenue Agency, GST/HST rates and where to apply them
Read 2026-09-26, page modified 2026-04-08. Source of the 13% HST rate for Ontario used once on the page, to show a C$5.49 monthly price as C$6.20 once HST is added.
- Bank of Canada, Daily exchange rates
Read 2026-09-26. Source of the US dollar to Canadian dollar rate of 1.4145 on 2026-09-25, used once, to state a US$20 monthly fee as about C$28.29.
- Our own pricing page
/pricing, read 2026-09-26. Hosting & Care at $59 CAD a month and its four listed inclusions, the first-year pairing with a build, and the line that the same plans cover WordPress, Squarespace and hand-coded sites. 12 x $59 = $708 a year.