HostPapa vs Web Hosting Canada – Close Match, but Only One Winner [2024]

Choosing between HostPapa and Web Hosting Canada can be confusing. Not only are these two hosts popular in Canada, but they have so much in common. Nevertheless, there are several differences between them you should know about to help you make the right decision.

Although Web Hosting Canada is a bit cheaper than HostPapa, HostPapa offers more premium features for free and it’s more proactive about your website’s security.

I tested both HostPapa and Web Hosting Canada across multiple categories and HostPapa won this comparison, but only by a slim margin.

Continue reading to see how each service performed in my in-depth comparison.

1. Plans and Pricing

HostPapa Offers Better Value for Your Money

HostPapa offers managed and unmanaged shared hosting, unmanaged WordPress hosting, VPS, and reseller hosting plans. Web Hosting Canada offers shared hosting, cloud VPS, managed WordPress hosting, reseller hosting, email hosting, and dedicated servers.

While HostPapa’s shared hosting plans renew at a slightly higher rate than Web Hosting Canada, you can host more websites with HostPapa’s cheapest plan (Starter) and its highest-tier package (Business Pro) includes more premium resources (for free) than Web Hosting Canada’s Enterprise plan (see the Features section).

HostPapa offers a free domain name with all its shared hosting plans. Web Hosting Canada only offers a free domain with higher-tier plans. Both hosts offer free website migration and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

The winner? Even though both hosts aren’t the cheapest out there, HostPapa wins this round for offering more value-added resources with its unmanaged shared hosting plans than Web Hosting Canada.

‌See HostPapa’s Latest Deals

2. Features

HostPapa Has More Useful Freebies Up Its Sleeve

Both HostPapa and Web Hosting Canada offer fully loaded shared hosting packages with SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, a free CloudFlare CDN (places your website on a global network to boost its overall loading speeds), cPanel, Softaculous installer (for CMS scripts like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla!, and hundreds more), and a free website builder to create your website from scratch.

HostPapa offers free a Let’s Encrypt certificate with all shared hosting plans, whereas Web Hosting Canada only offers it with its Pro and Enterprise packages. HostPapa also offers free Spam Experts with all plans (email protection), but Web Hosting Canada doesn’t.

Unlike Web Hosting Canada, HostPapa’s Business Pro plan is packed with more security features such as a free Wildcard SSL certificate, domain privacy, and performance-enhancing features (e.g.: rocket fast servers and fewer accounts per server).

See more differences between HostPapa and Web Hosting Canada:

The winner? It was a close call between these two hosts. Both offer wonderful feature sets for shared hosting, plenty of storage, and free extras. However, HostPapa wins this round just by a whisker for offering more premium features for free.

‌See HostPapa’s Best Plans

3. Performance

It’s A Tie Between HostPapa and Web Hosting Canada

HostPapa promises a 99.9% uptime guarantee, but when I tested my website’s uptime using Uptime Robot (over a period of 30 days), the actual uptime was 100%. This means that I didn’t experience any downtime at all with HostPapa for a month, which is pretty impressive.

Using Sucuri to test the page loading speed of my website from different locations around the world, some servers in Canada, the US, and Europe showed impressive loading times. However, the rest of the servers failed to connect, leading to a disappointing score of an F.

I finally tested HostPapa’s overall performance test using GTmetrix. Surprisingly, it scored a very good B at 85%.

To learn more about these performance tests, read our full HostPapa review.

Web Hosting Canada, like HostPapa, also promises 99.9% uptime. When tested over a month with Uptime Robot, it showed an actual uptime of 99.917%. Even though it exceeded its guaranteed uptime, I experienced some downtime, as opposed to with HostPapa.

Using Sucuri to test its loading speeds, Web Hosting Canada scored an F as well. However, unlike HostPapa, all servers were connected only performed really slow.

Finishing off with the overall performance test on GTmetrix, Web Hosting Canada also scored a B, but at 88%.

To see how these scores all add up, check out our in-depth Web Hosting Canada review.

While Web Hosting Canada scored a slightly higher overall performance score than HostPapa, HostPapa showed no downtimes. Both hosting providers scored an F in the loading speeds test.

4. Security

HostPapa Offers More Free Security Features

Web Hosting Canada uses firewall protection to secure the websites hosted on its servers against hackers and unwanted cyber threats. All shared server accounts are protected against Brute-Force and DDoS attacks. The higher plans also come with anti-malware protection.

HostPapa, on the other hand, comes with a wide range of security features that are included in all plans, such as:

• DDoS/Brute-Force-protection
• CloudLinux OS (securly isolates accounts on the same server)
• ModSecurity
• Patchman enhanced auto-security
• Free SiteLock (anti-malware with Business Pro plan only)

Both hosts secure their email platforms (by default) with antivirus and anti spam. In addition both have 24/7 secure server monitoring.

HostPapa and Web Hosting Canada both offer great security features, but HostPapa offers a wider range of security features, making it the winner of this round.

5. Support

HostPapa Goes The Extra Mile

Both HostPapa and Web Hosting Canada have resourceful websites with comprehensive Knowledgebase sections. HostPapa additionally offers detailed video tutorials.

HostPapa offers 24/7 customer support via phone, live chat, email, and support ticket. Not only that, but the customer support is available in English, French, German, and Spanish.

I went for both the live chat and support ticket channels. With the live chat, I was connected instantly and all my questions were answered clearly. The support ticket, however, took almost three hours for a reply to come through.

HostPapa also offers a 30-minute one-on-one training session for its customers with one of its experts.

Web Hosting Canada offers 24/7 customer support through the same channels, but in English only. Even though it can take up to two minutes to get connected to a live chat representative, once I was connected all the answers came in instantly. The ticket support response time can vary from 15 minutes to up to 3 hours depending on how busy the queue is.

Both HostPapa and Web Hosting Canada offer reliable support. However, HostPapa emerges as the winner in this comparison due to its multilingual customer support, video tutorials, and complimentary training sessions.

It’s a Close Call, but HostPapa Wins

It was definitely a tough race between HostPapa and Web Hosting Canada. They both offer feature-rich hosting plans for different budget needs. Web Hosting Canada may be slightly cheaper than HostPapa, but you get more freebies with HostPapa, better support, and better security. That’s why HostPapa is crowned the winner of this comparison.

On the other hand, neither HostPapa nor Web Hosting Canada has made it to our expert list of the best web hosting services. Find out who did!

FAQ

Is HostPapa better than Web Hosting Canada?

It depends on your hosting needs. If you’re looking for the cheaper option between the two or if you need dedicated server hosting, then Web Hosting Canada will be more suitable for you. However, if you can spare a couple more dollars or if you’re a security-concerned user, HostPapa is a good choice.

If you’re not sure if either of these hosts is right for you, check out our top recommended web hosting services.

Does HostPapa offer WordPress hosting?

Yes. HostPapa offers three unmanaged WordPress hosting plans with up to unlimited SSD storage, one free domain name registration, unlimited bandwidth, and from two to unlimited hosted websites. HostPapa isn’t quite right for you? Don’t miss this list of the best managed WordPress hosting services.

Does Web Hosting Canada offer dedicated server hosting?

Yes. Web Hosting Canada offers three managed dedicated server hosting plans with your choice of SATA or SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, from 32 GB to 128 GB RAM, and cPanel/WHM. The company will also migrate your website for free.

Does Web Hosting Canada offer a free domain?

Web Hosting Canada doesn’t offer a free domain with all its hosting packages. You can get a free domain name with the Pro or Enterprise plans for one year only. After that, your domain name will renew at the then-current price. Want more options? Check out our ultimate guide to choosing a domain name.