If you own a domain — a .com, .ca or otherwise — it's time to give your website a home on the Internet. That's what hosting does.
Shared Hosting
The most common and cost-effective form of hosting. Your site shares a web server with other sites, which is invisible to your visitors and works well for the vast majority of small business websites.
Dedicated Hosting
Your site gets its own private (static) IP address — important if you plan to accept credit card payments directly through your site, since that requires an SSL certificate tied to a dedicated IP.
E-commerce Hosting
This is dedicated hosting plus the SSL encryption needed to protect credit card information as it travels from your customer's browser to your server. There are two common approaches:
Using a third-party payment processor (e.g. PayPal)
- They take a percentage of each sale
- You don't need your own SSL certificate or dedicated IP
- There's a learning curve for their software
- No need for your own merchant account with Visa/Mastercard
Using your own merchant account
- You keep more of each sale
- You need an SSL certificate and dedicated IP
- Customers check out directly on your site — no redirect to another company
Get in touch and we'll help you figure out which type of hosting is right for your site — and what it will cost at today's rates.