Canadian hosting with HostPapa – cheap but inconsistent
May 7, 2010 Web and Product Reviews
Not too long ago, I discovered something really interesting about HostPapa. They have two different websites, HostPapa.ca and HostPapa.com, and there are some curious differences between them.
HostPapa.ca is aimed at Canadian customers, so it has the Canadian flag at the top of the site, while HostPapa.com is aimed at American customers, and thus has an American flag at the top. However, there are a few more differences that everyone should know about.
In both cases, it is still a Canadian company, and the data centres (or ‘centers’ as it is spelled in America) are located in Toronto just the same, but the price difference between the two sites is quite a lot. If you purchase a 3-year hosting plan from the Canadian site, it is $5.95/month. That is a pretty good price by itself, of course. However, if you purchase the same plan from the American site, it is just $4.95/month. That’s a difference of $36 over 3 years!
One other difference worth mentioning is that you are not able to select a Canadian (.ca) domain name if you order from the American site. Your free domain will have to be a .com, .net, .org, .biz, or .info. So if you want a .ca domain name, you will have to order from the Canadian site and pay $36 more for a 3-year plan. Is it worth it? I think not.
So if you want to purchase a hosting plan from HostPapa, my advice to you is to sign up through the American site, HostPapa.com, which isn’t really an American site, but actually a Canadian hosting company’s website aimed at American buyers. You can purchase it through there just the same and save $36 in the process, especially in these times when the Canadian and American dollars are dancing around parity.
Canadian aimed site
To sign up through the “for Canadian customers” site and pay more just to get a .ca domain name that you can buy yourself for less than 1/3 the price, click here.
American aimed site
To sign up through the “for American customers” site and get the best hosting deal possible from HostPapa, click here.
The choice is yours.
Update: Hostpapa has now increased their price for Americans to $5.95 to match the Canadian price. I should have known that instead of making them both $4.95, they would choose the higher price for both. They are also lying about the new price on the American-aimed site. They say that their regular price is $6.95 and they are now offering their hosting at $5.95. In fact, it used to say the regular price was $5.95, and they were offering it as $4.95. Very dishonest.
Disclaimer: The above banners are hosted offsite and may change at any time. At the time of this writing, all prices and details stated above were indeed true.
Tags: best hosting, cheap hosting, hosting, hostpapa, web hosting
Leave a Reply