HostPapa entered the dedicated and hosted applications market in 2002, and began offering web hosting services to customers in 2005, through its first registered domain. It was officially founded in Canada by Jamie Opalchuk in 2006. In its promotional material, HostPapa committed to using green energy. In 2010 HostPapa was accredited by the Better Business Bureau. The current company logo, including the "Papa" character, was the result of a 2012 "Who's Your Papa?" logo design contest. In June 2012, HostPapa partnered with CloudFlare, a website performance optimization company. Also in 2012, HostPapa announced a partnership with SiteLock Website Security. In 2013, 2015 and 2015, HostPapa appeared on the PROFIT 500 ranking of Canada’s fastest-growing companies based on five-year revenue growth. On February 9, 2015, Dropmysite announced multi-language partnership with HostPapa. HostPapa has received several awards since the company was founded, including Uptime Awards from NCM Online and WHTop.
Infrastructure
HostPapa has web hosting infrastructure, including Hewlett-Packard hardware and servers, networked by Cisco equipment, in various tier one data centers in Canada and around the world. The company operates North American-based call centers for customer support in English, French, and Spanish. Its hosting services use Sucuri server software and CloudProxy. The company uses MailChannelsSMTP relayanti-spam technology to analyze outbound email behaviour in order to limit unwanted emails and ensure email delivery to its customers. Customers use cPanelcontrol panel to access HostPapa's web hosting software. HostPapa uses 100% renewable energy to power data centres, web servers, office computers, laptops, and office spaces, limiting its carbon emissions. In July 2017 CEO Jamie Opalchuk said the company plans to broaden its data center coverage in 2017 with servers in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia.
Services
HostPapa offers several shared website hosting plans which provide unlimited domains and subdomains, with 500 to 1000MB limited individual email, MySQL, cPanel access, and private name services. In 2015, PC Magazine pointed out that, unlike some of its competitors, HostPapa did not offer dedicated or managed WordPress hosting.
Incidents
On May 7, 2015, Fergal Gallagher from Tech Times reported a worldwide hacking issue that endangered millions of websites. WordPress software vulnerabilities could have allowed hackers to gain control of websites using the default theme and plug-in if the website owner or administrator clicked on a malicious link. At the time of publication, major web hosts, including HostPapa, had already fixed the vulnerability.
Philanthropy
In 2011, through the Love Trees charity, HostPapa donated 10,000 trees in Africa for Earth Day. HostPapa was given the Love Trees Partnership award of Merit. That year, HostPapa held a promotion in which it donated $5 to Save the Elephants for every customer who transferred to HostPapa.
