When he who shall not be named threatened to annex Canada earlier this year, some of us took that a bit personally, to say the least. In response to the tariff war, we Canadians have been choosing Canadian suppliers for our purchases of services and products. As part of that, I moved my backup services to Canadian suppliers, and requested Canadian data centres from my (Canadian) web hosting supplier. I also chose a more secure password manager, and researched a number of Canadian alternatives for my clients. Here’s what I learned in that process.

The general tips

A good process is to look up all your current service providers for cloud software, backups, hosting, email and find out where they are owned. Then identify American providers you want to eliminate.

How do I know if my service provider is American?

The easiest way is to do a quick google search on the question in the format – Is CompanyName Canadian owned? Or Is CompanyName American Owned. The AI search response will often give you enough detail to make this decision. However, AI can be very inaccurate, so make sure you click through to their source information using the links and double-check. If those tools are inconclusive or you prefer not to use AI, go to the website of the supplier company, scroll down to the footer of their web page and look for a contact page or an about page. Often these pages contain location information.

How do I find Canadian alternatives?

Again a google search is a good place to start: “What is a Canadian owned alternative to NameOfService?” Check out the AI overview and then click through to confirm accuracy.

Here are some I found. None are (currently) paying me for this review, but I’m not opposed to some love as I’ve already written an objective review.

Canadian alternatives for file storage, web and email hosting, email providers and software, email mailing list services

Dropbox >>> www.Sync.com – Pros: It’s Canadian, its cheaper, it has better security (no staff acess to encrypted data) and it works fine. Like Dropbox, it is encrypted in transfer and storage. Cons: It has fewer integrations with third party tools that store information seamlessly on dropbox, so if you use those, you’ll have to find a workaround, as I did. It also is a little slower, I find.
Your web and email hosting – do a search for “web hosting based in mycity myprovince” you can also use the nearest large city if you live somewhere small. Why pick hosting in your actual city? It means that the service department will likely be in your time zone and their data centres are also likely to be local. Scroll past all the sponsored responses as non-Canadian companies might have paid to be positioned on that search result, and look at the AI generated summary or the non-sponsored links. When I searched “web hosting based in vancouver bc” I found three entries, one of which I already use pretty extensively. Important: Check with the host you are thinking of switching to whether they have data centres located in Canada. Where data is stored matters quite a lot when it comes to speed, data privacy and security. The closer the data centres are physically to your best customers the better. The internet seems instantaneous, but it’s not. It also confirms that your data is stored in compliance with Canadian PIPEDA privacy law if the data centre is in Canada.
Gmail >> Your own Canadian web hosting provider’s domain email and webmail. Did you know that most web hosts can issue you email addresses you can access via webmail or an email program? If you are looking for an email program that doesn’t give Canadian dollars to US providers, Thunderbird works well and is a non-profit.
Mailchimp >> Do a search for “canadian-owned mailing list service” and several providers will show up. I have checked out the following below. I haven’t used any of them yet, but I’ll let you know when I’ve selected a service and completed that switch. Comparison of the free plans:

- Mailchimp (American Owned, for comparison) – max 500 contacts, 1000 emails sent, $18.12 USD (About $25.99 CAD) if you want 5000 contacts and 5000 emails sent
- Canadian: Cyberimpact – max 250 contacts, unlimited sends, $22 CAD/month for more
- Canadian: Envoke – no free plan, $29 CAD/ month, unlimited sends, data storage in Canada, cagey about pricing for contact numbers
- Canadian: Cakemail – Free plan has 500 contacts limit, 6000 sends monthly, data storage in Canada, $15/month for 1000 contacts and 12,000 sends (so far these are looking the best, price-wise)

In future blogs, I will provide more details on the process for switching over.