Small Business Tools and Reviews

Disclaimer – In full transparency and honesty, I do make a commission if you purchase one of my recommendations. I use that money to pay for development of this website and also give myself a salary which I use mostly for professional development. 

Welcome to the small biz tools section for Hosting Canada. The goal of this page is pretty simple – to help Canadians understand the variety of services to build and grow their online businesses.

You might be thinking… wait isn’t this a website about web hosting? 🤔

Yes, that was the original goal when I started this in 2017 but over the last three years an amazing journey of growing several of my own online businesses, helping others and speaking at community events in and around Ottawa has give me a crash course of the finances, HR and day-to-day operations.

I decided to make this section to help other small biz owners looking to get the best tools and services for the job. Whether that’s which credit card gives the best points, which bank account has the best interest rates or which insurance plan covers you I’ve reviewed (or will review) most of them.

All of my picks are based off my own research and experience. I strive to maintain transparency and only recommend products I’ve used and tested.

Financial Products for Small Businesses

Over the last 3 years I’ve done a fair bit of research on the financial products that are best suited towards small businesses and entrepreneurs. In this section I compare products based on plans, services and pricing.

• Best Travel Credit Card Canada – Canadian cards don’t have the same benefits as American travel cards but I’ve done my best to pick the best ones to give you max points. First class anyone!
• Tax Software for Small Businesses and Individuals – Depending on the size of your business, different types of tax software might be more or less suitable for you.

Software Reviews

In this section you can level up your software choices. I don’t have everything here but I’ll be slowly adding to this over the next year or so. I focus on premium products and generally avoid free ones here.

• Best CRM Software – CRMs are powerful tools that each business NEEDS as they scale up. I’ve gone through most of them and divided them into best free/paid options.
• Best Free VPN Canada – I’m not a fan of free VPNs. They aren’t safe and spy on most of their customers. In this guide I break down everything you need to know and AVOID about them.
• Best VPN Canada – The VPN market is pretty opaque with almost 1/2 of the companies owned by Chinese businesses (scary!). In this review I looked at the top providers for Canadians.

Gary’s Personal Reviews of Random Things

This is where I review random stuff. Stay tuned for my first review of my favorite stuffed toys.

• Best Trading Platforms – Long gone are my days of using TD’s overpriced online brokerage. In this guide I explain the fees and services of native digital only brokers.
• Questrade Review – The number one trading platform for Canadians reviewed in detail.

Our Step-by-Step Guides

• How to Add a Host Name Alias in the etc/hosts file – You can add the host name and aliases of the storage system in the /etc/hosts file. You can use the setup command to rewrite the /etc/hosts file.

• How to Hire a web Developer – While hiring a web developer is a great idea, there is an implicit risk, understanding how to hire a web developer is crucial for your business.

• How to create a password for a .htpasswd file using PHP – We provide instruction and a PHP script that generates a password for .htpasswd from the clear text password stored in $clearTextPassword.

More Tutorials coming soon! Stay tuned.