If your customers are in Canada, use the .ca. If a real share of them are in the United States, use the .com and register the .ca as well. Either one will work, and the choice matters less than two things people skip: which one is the main address, and whose name is on the record.
Here is how to decide, and what each ending actually does.
What is the difference between .ca and .com?
.ca is Canada's country code. It is run by CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, and it comes with a condition: the registrant has to meet CIRA's Canadian Presence Requirements. A Canadian citizen or permanent resident qualifies, so does a Canadian business, and a foreign company that holds a registered Canadian trademark can register the matching name. A person in another country with no connection to Canada cannot register one in their own name.
.com is generic. Anyone, anywhere, can register any .com that is free. It says nothing about where a business is or who it sells to.
That is the whole technical difference. The rest is what those two facts mean to a customer and to Google.
Does a .ca help you show up in Google in Canada?
It helps, and it is not the thing that decides it.
Google's documentation on managing multi-regional sites says that country-code domains such as .ca "provide a strong signal to both users and search engines that your site is explicitly intended for a certain country". A .ca tells Google you are Canadian without any further work.
The same page says a generic domain like .com can target a country too, using other signals. The list it gives: hreflang annotations, the location of your server, and "local addresses and phone numbers on the pages, the use of local language and currency, links from other local sites, or signals from your Business Profile".
Read that list again, because it is the list that matters. A Toronto plumber on a .com with a Toronto address on every page, prices in dollars, a Google Business Profile at that address, and links from local suppliers and associations is clearly Canadian to Google. A .ca with a generic homepage, no address, no city named anywhere, and no Business Profile is not. The ending gives a nudge. The content does the work, and how that content gets built for a town is covered in how to show up in local search in Ontario.
So a .ca is a good default for a Canadian business. It is not a fix for a site that never says where it is.
Does a .ca help with customers?
Yes, in a quieter way than the search one.
A visitor from Ottawa who lands on a .ca knows before reading a word that the prices are probably in Canadian dollars, the shipping is probably domestic, and the business is probably here. On a .com they have to check. For a store, that check is the first thing they scroll to find, and if the currency is not stated on the page, some of them leave to look elsewhere. That is a page problem more than a domain problem, and it is why whether to show prices on your website has a clear answer for stores.
For a service business that only works in Ontario, a .ca removes one small doubt. For a store that ships across the border, a .com removes a different one: the American buyer does not wonder whether you serve them.
What if you sell to the United States too?
Then the .com is your main address, and you register the .ca as well and point it at the .com.
The reason is the same Google guidance in reverse. A .ca is a strong signal that the site is for Canada. If a third of your orders come from Michigan and Ohio, you do not want the domain telling Google the site is not for them. A .com with a Canadian address and CAD pricing still reads as Canadian to Canadians, and it does not push American buyers away.
The .ca still gets registered, for the same reason you would not leave your business name unregistered: so nobody else picks it up.
Should you own both?
If both are available, yes. A domain is a small yearly fee, and the second one costs less than the conversation you will have later with whoever bought it.
The rule that goes with it: one domain is the site, the other redirects to it. Every page on the secondary domain sends the visitor, and Google, to the same page on the main one. Do not build two sites, and do not put English on one and French on the other. Split content is two half-sites competing with each other, and Google's multi-regional documentation, which compares the ways to structure a site for more than one language, describes subdirectories, the /fr/ kind, as the low-maintenance option. For an Ontario business the answer is one domain with /en/ and /fr/ paths, and the reasons are in does your Ontario business need a bilingual website.
Skip the odd variants. You do not need the .net, the .biz, the .co, or the .ca with a hyphen in it. The name people type is the one you want, plus the one obvious alternative so it cannot be used against you.
What if the .com is taken?
Take the .ca and move on, unless you are selling into the US.
Someone holding a .com that matches your name is common, and paying them for it is rarely worth it for a local business. Your customers find you through search, maps, referrals and a business card, not by guessing your address. What matters is that the domain on the card, the domain in your Google Business Profile, and the domain your email comes from are all the same one.
Do check that the .com holder is not a business in your field, in your area, with your name. That is a trademark and confusion question, not a domain question, and it is worth a conversation with a lawyer before you print anything.
Who should be the registrant?
You. Your business, in your name, with your email on the account.
This is the part that goes wrong more often than the .ca or .com choice, and it goes wrong the same way every time: the web designer, the nephew, or the agency registers the domain under their own account "to make it easier", and years later the business cannot renew it, move it, or prove it owns it. On a .ca there is a second layer, because the registrant on record has to meet CIRA's presence requirements, so an overseas contractor in that field is a problem on its own terms. How to check who is on the record, and how to get it back, is in who owns your website.
The domain is also where your email lives. If it lapses because the renewal notice went to someone else's inbox, the website goes dark and so does every address on it. The mechanics of that are in why contact form emails are not arriving.
Can you change your domain later?
Yes, and it costs more than choosing right the first time.
A domain change is a redesign-sized event for search. Every old address has to redirect to its exact new counterpart, the Business Profile has to be updated, every directory listing has to be changed, and rankings take time to settle. It is done regularly and it is not a disaster, but it is a project, and the steps are the same ones in how to redesign a website without losing rankings.
If you are about to build or rebuild, decide the domain before the build starts, not after the site is live.
What does this cost?
The domain itself is a small yearly fee from any registrar, and it should be on your own card, not ours.
Setting up the redirect from the second domain, pointing email at the right place, and making sure the site says where it is on every page is part of every build we do. Our marketing sites and landing pages run from $1,200 to $8,000, and store and B2B builds start at $2,900. The ranges are on pricing, and how a site gets scoped is on web design.
If you are not sure whether your current domain, or the content on it, is telling Google and your customers that you are in Ontario, send us the URL for a free teardown. We will tell you what the site says about where you are, who is on the domain record, and what to fix first, whether or not you work with us.