Canada IT Industry: Companies and General Profile

There are over 43,200 companies in the Canadian Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) sector. The large majority (over 39,000) fall within the software and computer services industries.

The ICT sector consists mainly of small companies, with approximately 37,500 of them employing fewer than 10 people. The number of large companies employing over 500 individuals accounts for approximately 105 firms, including subsidiaries of foreign multinational corporations.

In a more industry-narrow way, the Canadian advertising and marketing industry is growing based on international awareness of creativity and the multicultural population. The progressive approaches are resonating with both US and globally-based companies, Mark Tharme from Muse Marketing says.

Why You Should Work With Canadian IT Companies

Canada has found itself in a favorable position compared to other countries that have a well-developed IT infrastructure. Web & IT agencies have a fast-developing rate due to facilitating policies and attracting more young professionals than any other country in the region. 

Additionally, IT companies in Canada provide a full-service range with a considerably lower price than in the U.S., and offer in exchange excellent execution, fair customer experience, and professional project management. 

From another perspective, working with Canadian IT companies could bring added value in terms of security. In uncertain times, both politically and economically, working with IT companies in Canada reduces technology risk.

What You Should Be Aware of When Working With Canadian IT Companies

The Canadians started to focus on developing their IT industry in 2012, which mainly reveals a lack of consistent experience in the web & software industry. Since almost all IT companies in Canada are small, with fewer than 10 people, the industry is in the full development process, and most of the agencies are not yet ready to take on big projects. Since then, the Canadian IT industry has rapidly evolved with major tech hubs like Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal by 2025.

At the same time, Canadian companies pay a living wage, and our standard of living is higher than in many other countries. As a result, expect the cost for services to be somewhat higher than in emerging economies.

Are Canadian Web Companies Reliable?

Along with the workforce, Canada attracts an increasing number of companies from around the world, and many of them find the place comfortable and suitable for growing a business in the IT industry. In 2025, there were more than 7,000 IT startups in Canada, according to StartupBlink. Small companies in the Canadian IT industry are new entries and don’t have a global reputation compared to tech giants that relocated or opened new offices in Canada. Nonetheless, you cannot name small Canadian IT companies unreliable, as they all obey the same principles and rules as the bigger ones. 

How the Canadian IT Industry Compares to the Neighboring Countries

With the leading US on the continent and probably globally, Canada started to get more attention from the market as being a healthy alternative to what the US has to offer. This refers both to skilled developers & web designers and also clients. Due to the market accessibility and developed IT infrastructure, Canada has its own advantages over the US, like prices and availability, but it’s still behind the U.S in terms of competitiveness. 

Overall, Canada is a promising destination for IT companies and a good option for web projects with a growing number of IT centers. The Toronto - Kitchener - Waterloo IT area registered good progress both in training and hiring new talents that compete even with the US Silicon Valley. 

What Makes Canada Attractive for IT Companies?

Canada is attractive because the society embraces a global mindset, which is natural due to the multicultural population, both in the industry and in the general population. Historically, the Canadian design and advertising industry was built on American, European, and Japanese cultural influences. Today, the country benefits from influences from all over the world.

At the same time, Amanda Nelson from The Art Of Business mentions that Canada has found itself in a favorable position compared to other countries that have well-developed IT infrastructure. Web & IT agencies have a fast-developing rate due to facilitating policies and attracting more.

How Does the Canadian Government Support the Local IT Sector?

Federally, the Canadian government is providing access to capital through grant programs, including digital transformation grants for businesses, which in turn creates opportunities for digital marketing and IT firms as service providers. 

Alberta and Ontario - The Best Canadian Territories/Provinces For IT

Out of 10 Territories and Provinces, Canada is divided. There are 2 worth mentioning - Alberta and Ontario, with Calgary and Toronto as the main tech hubs. 

The Toronto/Hamilton business corridor (known as the GTHA) is growing rapidly, both in population and as an international business centre. It already has the highest-density population in Canada and is projected to grow significantly by 2050. With close proximity to Northeastern US markets, high awareness of the city of Toronto as an international destination, and an excellent culture of creativity across all disciplines, this area is well-positioned for growth. Immigration policies are also favorable for companies seeking a location in North America.

In addition, according to Ty Mikitka from Vertical Motion Inc., in recent years, Calgary, Alberta, has made growing strides to become a recognized Western Canadian technology hub thanks to the influx of large technology companies. Notable organizations, including Unity Technologies, Infosys, Test Driven Solutions, RBC Innovation Hub, and Amazon Web Services (Late 2023-Early 2024), now call Calgary home, creating thousands of IT jobs for local Canadians.

"Canadian IT Talent Pool is Good to Excellent"

When talking about the Canadian talent pool, Mark Tharme appreciated the local talent pool as good to excellent. He thinks that IT and communications-related education is available at all levels: colleges, universities, and private schools offer courses in a wide range of information technology disciplines. Students have opportunities to do work placements, co-ops, and internships with many well-regarded companies while studying or upon graduation from a recognized program.

Plan to Open a New IT Business in Canada? Focus on New Technologies!

Local tech leaders also mention that there is enough room in the market for new, innovative companies. However, most of the opportunities are especially in new and emerging technology areas, including AI, cybersecurity, and data management. Canadian companies are "punching above their weight" in many of these areas. Another sector good to explore is security. As Justin Harney from LionEater, the country needs IT security leadership. 

As for how easy it is to open a business in Canada, Jeffrey Miles from Jeff Social Marketing mentions that it’s simple to open a business in Canada. The first step is to apply for a business license.

This article was created together with professionals coming from reputable Canadian IT companies. Special credits: Jeffrey Miles, Mark Tharme, Justin Harne, Ty Mikitka, and Amanda Nelson.

SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of optimizing your website in order to get a higher ranking in organic search results and consequently more organic traffic.

SEO is a long term strategy and requires advanced knowledge of ranking algorithms and some technical background, to be able to optimize websites for popular search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc.

According to the latest survey on digital marketing conducted by TechBehemoths, about 70% of IT companies revealed that SEO is their main channel for leads, meaning that it’s a vital marketing activity that generates traffic, prospects and sales.

Some of the benefits of SEO are:

• Free organic traffic
• Brand awareness 
• Better control over brand traffic
• A vital marketing channel for leads & sales
• Supports other channels: social media, paid ads, direct traffic, etc.
• Optimizes your advertising budget
• Usually, has a higher conversion rate
• Gives you a competitive advantage
• Is a good long term investment, generating decent results

It’s not easy to find a reputable SEO company, as some SEO agencies used to provide questionable/suspicious services in the past, and lots of businesses became reluctant to pay for search engine optimization services.

When looking for and choosing an SEO service provider, you should consider a lot of aspects. Ideally, you should do some basic research, set up clear goals and ask yourself a few questions before hiring a company.

Here are some things to look for when searching for SEO agencies to partner with:

• Expertise
• Portfolio
• Years in business
• Case studies
• Price (expect to pay at least $30 / hour if you’re hiring an agency)
• Approach and particularities (technical SEO, link building, content optimization, etc.)
• Communication and reporting

TechBehemoths lists more than 30,400 SEO companies from all over the world. Check out their profiles and feel free to get in touch with them.

To ease the selection process, we’ve created a powerful filter which you can use to narrow down the results based on your requirements and shortlist the companies.

SEO and search in the AI era

SEO has dramatically changed since the launch of chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, etc. (post end of 2022), and disrupted the whole search industry for both business owners/publishers and users who search on the web.

User interaction has completely changed, with more users opting for natural language questions instead of search keywords.

While the traditional 10 blue links in Google or Bing are not gone, their importance has shifted , as traditional search engines now integrate summarized answers via AI (Eg. Google AI Overviews, Bing Copilot Search).

Traditional search engines are shifting to chatbot-like interfaces, where users discuss with AI and get relevant and customized answers, just like in ChatGPT or Claude.

This is good and bad news for both business owners and users.

On the positive side, AI chatbots offer endless possibilities for content creation, automation, customization, app/software development, etc. and the entry point is really low. But there are downsides too:

There have been many concerns that AI systems are using copyrighted content to train themselves and generate answers without giving credit or sending referral traffic to the original content creators.

Users can experience AI hallucinations (made up, false information), no real-time data, bias and might diminish critical thinking and evaluation of multiple sources to create an opinion or an action.

SEO is still the foundation

Being present and visible in both search engines and chatbots is critical these days. SEO is the foundation for that, as chatbots operate in a similar way: they use their large language models (LLMs) to answer questions and 3rd party sources (Bing index, web APIs, etc.) to provide real time or recent info and citations/sources within the answers.

If your website is present in Google or Bing index and ranks well in their organic search results, it’s most likely that it will be often cited in chatbots (although it’s not directly correlated).

This is why a new type of SEO has emerged: AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) or GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) which is basically SEO for AI.

To make sure that your website ranks well and is present in traditional search index and AI based search engines, you still need to have a good technical SEO foundation. Here are some fundamental aspects that you need to consider:

• Robots.txt - should be properly configured so that search engines can access your website

• Crawlability - make sure you have a sitemap and meta robots tags on pages that you want or don’t want to appear in search results

• Duplicate content - implement canonical tags, so that search engines know what are the primary/preferred pages to be indexed and ranked/cited.

• Site speed - is essential for users and search engines. Your web pages should load fast on all kinds of devices.

• Mobile first - smartphones are the primary devices for most users, so having a mobile-first website is highly recommended. For more advanced sites with high traffic volumes: PWA and mobile apps could work too.  

• Schema markup - chatbots and search engines rely on structured data to better understand your pages and the type of content you are serving to users. Common schema types can be: local business, event, product, review, rating, etc.

There are other parts of SEO that should be also considered like content creation and backlink/citation building.

Content creation is a significant part of SEO and many companies choose to either outsource or automate the process by using AI tools. It’s important to note that search engines don’t penalize content created by AI, however the quality of content is vital and often content created at scale with AI, doesn’t present much value.

This is why SEO agencies can have a smart/modern approach where they use humans/professionals and AI to help them create valuable content, not just generate content that has no value.

Before you hire an SEO agency it’s important to ask and know exactly how they use AI and what’s their workflow.

Some agencies offer link building/citation building services. Our advice is to avoid bulk/automated link submission services and opt for customized and high quality link building services. Focus on quality rather than quantity.

Managing technical SEO can be overwhelming, hence you can opt for reliable SEO agencies that can make sure your website is up and ranking in search engines, while you can focus on achieving the desired business results.

How to shortlist SEO agencies for your projects?

Finding the right SEO agency for your projects might be a difficult task. That’s why, TechBehemoths offers a few tools to facilitate this process:

Search

Simply search for SEO related services and include the desired location (city or country) and browse the listings. Look at companies with awards, positive reviews, great/excellent profile strength and strong portfolios. 

Feel free to get in touch with the right companies directly from listings.

Advanced filter

Use the advanced filter to narrow down your search results by lots of handy criteria like: location, technologies and tools, team size, hourly rate, review count and rating, and many more. 

You can also sort the filtered results to get a more organized view of your shortlisted companies.

There is an option to save your filter results and choose to receive notifications if new companies meet your filter criteria.

Submit project

Head over to Submit project techbehemoths.com/project-submission and include your project description and specifications, and our system will match it with the best possible tech service providers. You will get a list of curated companies ready to execute your projects.