Election 2016 – Is it safe to come out yet?

First off, I need to clarify: We’re not a political organization. As individual people we do, of course, have our political leanings, but as a company we don’t take any position or side. We’re inclusive and welcoming of all legally protected speech and content.

So, Election 2016 is behind us. It’s been a bit now, and some of the fanfare has begun to die out. A lot of people are waiting with great anticipation, and others with great trepidation, for what is sure to be an interesting next four years in the United States. We understand, we completely get it – we had a rather landmark election here in Canada not long ago.

What’s been concerning to some of our customers, both existing and new customers moving to our platform, is some of the President-Elect’s rhetoric around “opening up the libel laws” and moving to reduce journalistic freedoms. We’re also seeing historically marginalized groups feeling the pressure of the election, worrying about their futures, and if their voices will be heard by the new administration.

To our existing customers who have expressed concerns about their content and viewpoints being shared, and to prospective customers worried about their existing US-based hosting company’s ability to protect them, we have one thing to say: Welcome to Canada.

All our shared hosting servers, and all of our Virtual Private Servers (unless specifically requested) are 100% Canadian. The servers are run in Canada, in Quebec to be specific, and our company is 100% Canadian owned and operated.

What does this mean to me?

Excellent question, and how self-serving of me to include it in this article! The upshot of our company and infrastructure being based entirely in Canada is that our servers, and our customers’ content, is protected by the rules and regulations here in Canada. We’re not subject to US jurisdiction, and we’re generally very polite people with a taste for rather strong beer. If you’re not sure that your content or your message is safe in the United States, then consider a Canadian provider for your website and email.

But you’re all the way in Canada, how could your hosting be fast for me?

Well, your brain sends messages all the way through your body very quickly. As America’s hat, Canada has direct access to the same sort of nerve channels to send messages through the US. Okay, I’ll admit, it doesn’t actually work like that, but our data centre has multiple top-tier connections which allow for extremely rapid, low-latency connection speeds throughout the continental US, Canada, Europe, and beyond.

On top of that, we don’t overload our servers. You can check the real-time server loads yourself on our server status page! We keep things purposefully under-loaded to handle traffic spikes without impacting customers’ service.

I have a WordPress site; can you run that?

Better than you’re probably used to, to be honest! We employ the latest web server technologies to provide the same sort of optimized environment usually only found on “WordPress Optimized” hosting platforms like WP Engine and other big companies’ ‘Managed WordPress’ hosting environments.

In closing the reality is that we’ve all survived another election… even if only barely! Just think, only 30 months until the ridiculously long campaign cycle starts again. In the meantime, head over to our shared hosting page and give our Canadian servers a spin. You won’t be disappointed.