Shared hosting runs $3–$10 CAD monthly and works for 80% of small business websites getting under 50,000 visits per month. Providers like SiteGround, HostPapa (Canadian), or Namecheap offer cPanel access, email accounts, and SSL certificates at this tier. You're sharing server resources with other sites, so performance can degrade if a neighbor gets traffic spikes. VPS hosting costs $20–$100 monthly and gives you dedicated RAM and CPU. This matters when you hit 100,000+ monthly visits, run WooCommerce stores with 500+ products, or need specific PHP versions and server configurations. Managed WordPress hosts like Kinsta or WP Engine charge $30–$100 for this tier with automated backups and staging environments. Dedicated servers start around $80–$150 for entry-level and scale to $500+ for high-spec machines. You need this for applications handling millions of requests, large databases, or when compliance requires isolated infrastructure. Most businesses never reach this threshold. At Ottawa SEO Inc., our 500+ domain portfolio runs primarily on VPS infrastructure at the $40–$80/month range per server, each handling 15–30 sites depending on traffic patterns. We stopped using $5 shared hosting years ago because inconsistent load times hurt SEO, and one bad plugin update taking down 20 sites isn't worth the $200 annual savings. Three costs people miss: SSL certificates are usually included now but used to add $50–$200 yearly. Domain privacy costs $5–$10 annually and prevents spam. Backups should be automatic, but good hosts charge $2–$5 monthly for off-server copies, and you want those. The real question isn't price, it's server location and support quality. A Canadian-hosted site loads faster for Toronto visitors than one on Arizona servers. Response time matters when your site breaks at 9pm on Friday, and $4/month providers don't answer tickets until Monday. Pay the extra $3–$8 monthly for hosts with live chat and 15-minute ticket response SLAs.