Canadian Web Host Offers Fast and Affordable Solutions for Quebec SMBs and Developers

TL: DR: “A single host. All possible solutions.” This is the philosophy of Astral Internet, a web hosting provider based in Quebec. Astral Internet empowers SMBs and developers with a variety of solutions to create fast, reliable, and customizable websites without spending too much time in the backend. We spoke with Daniel Berthiaume, Head of Research and Development, who shared some helpful insights into Astral Internet’s mission and services.

Earlier this year, I visited Montreal for the first time. I felt star-struck as dozens of cars whizzed by on the snowy downtown roads without hesitation and just as many pedestrians hiked up 45-degree slushy sidewalks with smiles on their faces.

Cold weather gets me down, despite being a New England U.S. native. But Canada is a different breed. Many theorize Montreal’s ranking as the world’s 15th-happiest country has to do in part with the city’s infrastructure.

I don’t just mean how much easier it is to merge on the Canadian highway or how charming the cobblestone streets are (although the tourist in me was most definitely excited to see such a beautiful city firsthand); it also comes down to how its city leaders work to provide a sense of community and accessibility.

Take Infrastructure Canada, the lead federal department responsible for infrastructure policy development, for example. In 2020, it collaborated with the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) to invest in high-speed internet through its $2 billion Growth Plan. Its goals are to strengthen the core investments of public infrastructure and improve social inclusion.

Astral Internet is a provider in the heart of Montreal that also keeps small business owners at the forefront. Located in Canada’s first Tier III data center, Astral Internet’s servers are flexible to scale, offering unmatched stability for SMBs, web developers, and individuals.

Daniel Berthiaume, Head of Research and Development, told us how Astral Internet’s primary goal is to address common hosting challenges with innovative solutions. In fact, quite a few of Astral Internet’s newest services were born from this philosophy.

Astral Internet was founded in 2001 by Martin Blanchette. Going in, Martin’s goal was to innovate and improve the Canadian web hosting space for small businesses and developers.

With more than two decades of experience dating back to the true dawn of the Digital Age, Astral Internet provides affordable and easy-to-use web hosting and domain-buying solutions for everyone in Canada’s French and English-speaking world.

Here’s a glance at its web hosting packages:

• Essential: Ideal for small websites or blogs. The plan includes one website, 100 GB of hard disk space, 1 GB RAM, 2 MB/s of write and read, 100,000 inodes, built-in caching, 1 GB of email space, a website builder, a free SSL certificate, and more for $4.90/mo ($3.60/mo U.S.).
• Elite: Great for sites that require more speed and resources. It includes unlimited websites, 4 GB RAM, 10 MB/s of write and read, 350,000 inodes, unlimited disk space, MySQL databases, and email addresses with 15 GB of email space for $12.74/mo ($9.35/mo U.S.).
• .NET Core: Required for ASP, .NET, or .NET Core and MSSQL. It includes unlimited websites, .NET Core 2.X to 8.X, a classic ASP website, unlimited disk space, 5 MS SQL databases, and 15 GB of email space, making it perfect for a DotNetNuke (DNN) site, all for C$12.65/mo ($9.29/mo U.S.).

Daniel also emphasized two main hosting avenues that many of its clients use: regular web hosting services and VPS options.

“There’s a completely different type of VPS hosting, where you can choose from unmanaged hosting or managed hosting, which you could install against cPanel for Linux web hosting,” Daniel explained. “We also have the same solution under Windows for .NET Core or ASP hosting.”

Beyond basic web hosting, Astral Internet provides WordPress hosting, reseller hosting, cloud VPS hosting, managed VPS hosting, email hosting, and domain registration and transfer services with partnerships, including cPanel, Plesk, CloudLinux, SmarterMail, and Imunify360.

Innovation is at the forefront of Astral Internet. SMBs, in particular, may benefit from the WSA (Website Accelerator) tool. WSA uses NGINX caching capabilities to maximize the speed and security of your cPanel-based sites and improve the responsiveness of your website.

As with most solutions, the WSA tool was born out of necessity.

“We tried online solutions — like Engintron, a free, open-source NGINX accelerator. Then we tried cPanel’s eAccelerator and Lightspeed Cache,” Daniel recalled. “But all those solutions crashed a quarter to half of the sites. So, we knew we had to build our own solution.”

Daniel added that creating an in-house solution (also available as a WordPress plugin) was one of the best moves Astral Internet could have made.

“It’s great because we can always add on new features and know how it works from front to back,” Daniel said, adding: “Ironically, all of our competitors can also benefit from it.”

It’s a bold claim, but the numbers speak for themselves:

• An uncached site, without WSA loaded, took 2.21 seconds to load. Its Google Page Insight mobile score was 35%, and the desktop score was 83%.
• When WSA was loaded, the performance improved significantly. The mobile score increased to 47%, the desktop score to 85%, and the load time decreased to an incredible 980 milliseconds.

WSA costs $5.00 per cPanel server, per month ($3.67/mo U.S.), with no limitation on the number of accounts.

As for the secret ingredient behind innovations like these, Daniel emphasized that the most critical factor in staying agile is curiosity.

Or carte blanche, as he said.

“Our team is so curious and cannot help themselves to try new things out and test them out,” Daniel said. “In French, we call it carte blanche — everyone is free to try anything during their work time, and we encourage them to let us know what they’ve found.”

And if it’s something worthwhile, then Astral Internet will work to integrate it for its customers.

Astral Internet also recently integrated email hosting with SmarterMail, a user-friendly email solution that supports popular email clients such as Thunderbird, Outlook, and Apple Mail.

“What do we love about SmarterMail?” Daniel chuckled. “It’s really clean and slick — nothing like Roundcube that you’ll see with cPanel.”

For those familiar with cPanel, you’re probably also familiar with Roundcube. If you’re not, all you need to know is that it’s an email client that supports cPanel, PHP, and MySQL.

But most SMBs don’t have the time or know-how to access their hosting servers’ backend, which is exactly where Astral Internet wants to assist.

“We’re just trying to leverage something that small and medium businesses can afford while having all the quality service they could get from well-known services, like Microsoft Exchange Server,” Daniel said.

The all-in-one platform offers an intuitive interface compatible with all browsers, calendars, task and contact management. It also allows for note organization with the option to embed images and links, shareability, and online meetings without needing third-party tools like Zoom or Teams.

And at just $6.00/mo ($4.40/mo U.S.), Astral’s email hosting also offers unlimited email addresses and scalable storage with no hidden fees.

Another notable service is Astral Internet’s cloud VPS option, giving website owners the benefits of managed hosting without the need for technical expertise.

“This product is a bridge between having your own server without knowing exactly how to use it,” Daniel explained.

Astral Internet keeps root access so its team can continuously manage the server. So, for example, if you want automatic scaling or specific requirements (e.g., 64 CPU or 200G of RAM), that’s no problem — its team will handle all those resources in the backend while you focus on what’s important.

Astral Internet covers all necessary licensing costs in your monthly payment, including Imunify360, KernelCare, and the in-house WSA.

“We’re just trying to leverage something that small and medium businesses can afford while having all the quality service they could get from well-known services.”

— Daniel Berthiaume, Head of Research and Development of Astral Internet

Daniel also hinted at some future additions: “We will also implement a custom role in our firewall and the physical firewall located in our data center to perform initial traffic cleanup before it reaches your server.”

Ultimately, Astral Internet prides itself on going the extra mile for its clients, whether trying out new solutions or answering a support message in the middle of the night.

“I would estimate that 99% of the time, these are things not included in typical web hosting,” Daniel said. “We provide these services free of charge because we believe it’s important to help people in a rapidly evolving world where it’s difficult to keep up.”

The best part is that it doesn’t matter where you’re from if you want to use Astral Internet for your business, as Astral Internet currently works with clients located in Europe, Africa, and many other parts of the world.

Give Astral Internet’s tailored hosting packages a try today. They are designed to meet the needs of small businesses and developers alike.