E-Commerce Platforms

Selling online in Canada adds a layer most US-focused platform reviews skip entirely: GST/HST collection varies by province, and if you ship across provincial lines you may need to track and remit tax at different rates depending on where your customer is located. The platform you choose should calculate this automatically at checkout — manually tracking multi-province tax rates in a spreadsheet is a fast way to under-remit and draw CRA attention.

What to look for: native Canadian tax rate tables (not a US-first tax engine with Canada bolted on), CAD-native pricing and payout currency so you aren't losing margin to conversion spreads, integration with Canada Post and major domestic carriers for shipping rate calculation, and payment gateway options that support Interac alongside standard credit cards — a meaningful share of Canadian shoppers still expect it.

Common mistakes: choosing a platform based purely on US case studies and discovering later that shipping zone configuration or tax remittance reporting doesn't map cleanly to Canadian requirements. Others under-price shipping because they didn't account for how much more expensive Canada Post is for cross-country delivery compared to US carriers. Model your real shipping costs before you set free-shipping thresholds.