Answer a few quick questions and watch the map narrow to the programs your online business can actually get — free, no account.
Here is what you need to know before you spend a weekend searching. No federal program funds web development, e-commerce platform costs, or online advertising as its purpose. The two that came closest are both gone: CDAP (the $2,400 micro-grant) wound down in 2025, and Digital Main Street ended March 31, 2024 when Ontario did not renew it. Anything you read today recommending either is out of date.
What does exist falls into three groups. Regional digital-adoption grants — small ($1,000–$25,000), reimbursement-based, and tied to one province, territory or city. National programs that fund something adjacent — export market development, R&D, AI adoption, tariff response — and every one of them lists website, hosting and advertising costs as ineligible. And loans that are frequently mislabelled as grants: CSBFP and Futurpreneur are both repayable.
So the practical route for an online business is not "find a website grant." It is: fund the work around the store — entering a new export market, building genuinely novel technology, or replacing U.S. sales you lost to tariffs — through a program that pays for that, and treat the store itself as your own cost. The programs that do this are below.
Counted on July 31, 2026 across the 697 programs in the GrantCompass catalog, filtered to every program whose stated purpose includes digital transformation or digital adoption.
The finding that matters: we read all ten of the Canada-wide programs. Not one of them is a grant for building a website or an online store. They are AI-adoption funds, manufacturing superclusters, a tariff-response fund, a student wage subsidy, and three BDC loan products. If you want money that touches your storefront directly, it will almost certainly be a regional program — and whether one exists depends entirely on your postal code.
Your business model determines which programs you can actually access. Here’s what the funding landscape looks like from four common e-commerce starting points.
You are in the narrowest window of funding access, and it is worth knowing that plainly rather than chasing programs you cannot get. CanExport now requires 3 full-time employees and $300,000 in revenue in your last complete tax year. IRAP requires a real R&D project. Most provincial digital grants require either a physical storefront or a revenue floor you have not hit.
The honest stack at this stage is Futurpreneur plus CSBFP, and both are loans. Futurpreneur lends up to $75,000 over five years to founders aged 18 to 39, paired with two years of mentorship from a business owner in your sector — for a lot of first-time operators the mentor is worth more than the money. CSBFP gives you up to $1.15 million through your existing bank ($1M in term loans plus a $150,000 line of credit) with the federal government guaranteeing 85% of it, which is why approval is easier than a conventional loan. Neither is free money. Both are cheaper and faster than the grants you do not yet qualify for.
The one non-obvious move: if you are writing any custom code beyond configuring Shopify, start documenting it now. SR&ED is filed retroactively at your fiscal year-end, and the filing window closes 18 months after that year-end with no extensions. Founders routinely discover eligible work a year too late to claim it.
You are in the strongest position of any e-commerce business type: you clear the revenue and employee thresholds on the programs that actually pay, and you have financial statements evaluators want to see.
Your first call is CanExport SMEs if any part of your growth plan is international — and the window closes August 31, 2026. Up to $50,000 at 50% cost-share for entering a new foreign market. Read the eligible-expense split below carefully before you build a budget: CanExport will pay for trade shows, market research, translating your marketing into the target language, and IP protection abroad. It will not pay for your Shopify subscription, your hosting, your online store development, your SEO, or any advertising. Applications targeting the United States are not being accepted at all this cycle.
If U.S. tariffs have hit you, look at the Regional Tariff Response Initiative before anything else. RTRI provides up to $1,000,000 non-repayable through your Regional Development Agency for SMEs with at least 25% of sales to U.S. or China markets, or demonstrable tariff-driven cost increases or lost orders. It is the largest non-repayable amount realistically open to a retail-only operator right now, and market diversification alone qualifies for up to $300,000.
Two frictions worth naming: CanExport approved around 40% of eligible applicants in 2025-26 out of close to 4,000 applications, and you must submit at least 60 business days before your first planned activity — so a trade show before roughly December 2026 can no longer be funded by an application filed today.
You are in the best position on this page, for a specific reason: the U.S. share of the CanExport budget is spent, and applications targeting the U.S. have stopped being accepted. The rest of the roughly $31 million 2026-27 budget is competing among non-U.S. projects only.
Your stack is CanExport SMEs plus EDC plus the Trade Commissioner Service. CanExport funds market-development costs at 50%; you must request between $10,000 and $50,000, which means your project has to be worth between $20,000 and $100,000 — a $6,000 localisation job is below the floor and cannot be funded. EDC's Trade Impact Program provides credit insurance and working-capital facilities that protect your international receivables. The Trade Commissioner Service gives you free, in-country market intelligence in 160+ cities; it is genuinely underused and costs nothing.
Rules that decide applications and are easy to miss: a target market only counts as "new" if your sales there were under $100,000 last tax year, or under 10% of total sales. You may name up to five target markets per project, but a project may target the U.S. or other markets — never both. And a company may hold only one active CanExport SMEs project at a time, capped at $99,999 across all CanExport programs per federal fiscal year.
You have the broadest access of any e-commerce founder, because your business model involves technology development rather than technology use. That is the line every R&D program draws, and it is the difference between $2,500 of regional digital-adoption money and six figures.
Your stack is IRAP plus SR&ED, with Scale AI on top if machine learning is genuinely part of the product. IRAP covers up to 80% of eligible R&D labour; NRC disbursed $393.1 million to 3,136 SMEs in FY2024-25, and first-time awards typically land between $75,000 and $200,000. SR&ED then returns 35% federally on the R&D dollars IRAP did not cover, on the first $6 million of eligible expenditures. Scale AI's Acceleration program adds up to $50,000 for practical AI deployment, delivered through 25+ partner accelerators rather than a central intake.
Sequencing matters more here than anywhere else on this page. Contact your regional NRC office and get an Industrial Technology Advisor assigned before the project starts, not after — IRAP does not fund work already underway. SR&ED is filed retroactively, so structure the R&D budget so SR&ED captures the 20% IRAP left behind. IRAP and SR&ED cannot both claim the same dollar, but they can cover different parts of the same project. Note also that IRAP requires incorporation: sole proprietorships, partnerships and cooperatives are ineligible.
For a brand-new online store, the best available funding in Canada is a Futurpreneur loan plus CSBFP financing — and you should stop looking for a startup grant, because the ones people recommend have closed.
Ontario’s Starter Company Plus, the program most often named for new businesses, is between cohort rounds and has been all year; the intake that was expected in spring 2026 has not opened. Digital Main Street ended in 2024. CDAP ended in 2025. What remains for a pre-revenue store is repayable capital on better-than-commercial terms, which is a legitimate answer even though it is not the one you wanted. The single highest-value thing you can do in your first year that costs nothing: keep a contemporaneous record of any custom development work, so that if it turns out to qualify for SR&ED you can still claim it. The 35% federal credit on the first $6 million of eligible R&D becomes the most valuable funding source you have as you scale.
Not everything marketed as a "grant" for online businesses is actually a grant. Here is an honest breakdown of the four categories.
The single biggest mistake e-commerce owners make is confusing loans with grants. Of the 55 currently-open digital-funding programs in our catalog, 13 are loans or forgivable loans and 2 are tax credits — and the two largest headline numbers you will see quoted for online businesses ($1.15 million from CSBFP, $75,000 from Futurpreneur) are both fully repayable. Regional development agency "contributions" are the other trap: the word sounds like a grant, and many of them are repayable.
Government covers a percentage of eligible costs with no repayment. CanExport (50%), IRAP (up to 80% of eligible R&D labour), RTRI (non-repayable up to $1M), Scale AI Acceleration, and most regional digital-adoption grants. You still fund the rest — typically 20–50% — in cash.
SR&ED gives 35% ITC for CCPCs on custom e-commerce technology development. Fully refundable (cash back even with no taxes owed). Requires genuine technological advancement — configuring Shopify does not qualify.
CSBFP ($1.15M), Futurpreneur ($75K) and all BDC products are loans. Better terms than a commercial bank, but not free money. These two are the most commonly misrepresented as grants in e-commerce funding articles.
Regional development agencies (ACOA, FedDev, PrairiesCan, PacifiCan, CED) often call their funding "contributions" — but many are primarily repayable. Read the fine print before assuming it is a grant.
Bottom line: Before you start an application, confirm whether the program is non-repayable (grant), spend-first (tax credit), or repayable (loan) — and confirm it is open in your province. GrantCompass labels every program in the catalog with its true funding type and live status, which is why the two dead programs above are marked dead here and still listed as available almost everywhere else.
Amounts, funding type and live status as of July 31, 2026, checked against each program’s official page. Every card links to its full record.
The largest grant an e-commerce business can realistically get without an R&D project — and the one most often described inaccurately. CanExport reimburses 50% of eligible costs of entering a new foreign market. You must request between $10,000 and $50,000, which means the project itself has to be worth $20,000 to $100,000; smaller projects are below the floor. A market only counts as "new" if your sales there were under $100,000 in your last tax year, or under 10% of total sales. You may name up to five target markets, but a single project may target the U.S. or other markets, never both.
The U.S. window is closed. Global Affairs states the $3.1 million reserved for U.S.-targeted projects "has now been fully allocated" and that it is "no longer accepting new applications for projects targeting the U.S. market at this time." Applications for all other markets remain open until 12:00 PM ET on August 31, 2026, assessed on a rolling competitive basis while funding lasts.
This is the single most expensive misunderstanding on this topic. Article after article lists "website localization" and "international digital marketing" as CanExport-eligible. Half of that is true. Here is the actual split, from the 2026-27 applicant’s guide.
Read that right-hand column again if you were planning a budget around it. The practical consequence: a strong CanExport application for an online retailer is built around a trade show, in-market research, translating your marketing into the target language, and protecting your IP abroad — not around your storefront. And because the grant will not pay for help writing the application, the cost of a consultant comes entirely out of your own pocket on top of your 50% share.
Source: Global Affairs Canada, CanExport SMEs Applicant’s Guide 2026-27, sections 3, 5 and 6. Verified July 30, 2026.
| Program | Max Non-Repayable | Status (Jul 31, 2026) | Key Threshold |
|---|---|---|---|
| CanExport SMEs | $50,000 | Open to Aug 31 — U.S. closed | 3 employees + $300K revenue last tax year |
| Regional Tariff Response Initiative | $1,000,000 | Open, intakes vary by agency | 25%+ of sales to U.S./China, or proven tariff impact |
| Ontario Together Trade Fund | $5,000,000 (forgivable loan) | Continuous intake | Ontario, tariff-impacted; $200K project floor |
| Alberta Export Expansion Program | $15,000 | Open until annual budget is exhausted | Alberta-based; submit within 2 months of the event |
| EDC Trade Impact Program | Financing, not a grant | Rolling | No revenue floor published |
Employee counts, revenue floors, incorporation status and province decide almost every program above. The interactive map at the top of this page narrows 697 Canadian programs down to the ones your business can actually apply for.
Check my eligibility — 5 questionsFree. No account, no email.
The largest non-repayable amount realistically open to a retail-only e-commerce business in Canada right now, and it is almost absent from the funding articles on this topic. RTRI is a $1.5 billion national program delivered through ACOA, CED, CanNor, FedNor, FedDev Ontario, PrairiesCan and PacifiCan, for SMEs hurt by U.S. and China tariffs. It funds productivity improvements, market diversification, supply-chain work and reshoring — and market diversification is exactly what an online seller losing U.S. orders needs to do.
The largest non-repayable funding for Canadian tech-driven SMEs — but it funds technology R&D, not running an online store. If you are building a proprietary recommendation engine, a custom logistics platform, AI-driven pricing, or novel marketplace infrastructure, IRAP can cover up to 80% of eligible R&D labour. If you are configuring Shopify, it cannot. In FY2024-25 NRC disbursed $393.1 million to 3,136 SMEs, having worked with 9,187 firms in total — so roughly one in three firms IRAP engages ends up funded.
The most overlooked funding source for e-commerce businesses doing genuine technical work, because most owners assume "we just use Shopify" ends the conversation. It does not, if you are building on top of it. What qualifies: proprietary recommendation engines, custom checkout or payment systems solving a real technical unknown, AI-driven personalisation, novel inventory or logistics optimisation, original marketplace platforms. What does not: installing Shopify, configuring apps, theme work, routine site design, standard SEO, setting up Mailchimp. Budget 2025 raised the enhanced-rate expenditure limit from $3 million to $6 million for tax years beginning after December 15, 2024.
Up to $50,000 non-repayable for SMEs putting AI into production. For online businesses, that means demand forecasting, intelligent inventory management, genuine AI customer service (not rule-based chat), dynamic pricing and supply-chain optimisation. It targets practical adoption rather than research, which makes it more reachable than IRAP for a retailer. There is no central deadline: the program runs through 25+ certified partner accelerators and incubators, each with its own intake. Note that the larger Scale AI Supercluster stream is a different thing — it requires a consortium of at least two companies.
Quebec’s digital transformation money, and the numbers are smaller than commonly quoted. Component 1A covers 50% of feasibility studies up to $50,000 — market analysis, technology evaluation — and notably has no minimum revenue, which makes it the most accessible piece for a growing Quebec store. Component 1C covers 50% of digital transformation implementation up to $50,000, but it has two gates people miss: you need at least $2.5 million in annual revenue, and you must first complete a Component 1B digital diagnostic. Budget six months for both. All documentation must be in French, filed through clicSÉQUR Entreprises.
| Program | Where | Amount | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| OCI Digitalization Competence Centre | Ontario | $5,000 (RMPG) | Only the retail RMPG stream is open; DMAP and TDP intakes are closed |
| PME MTL Fonds Entrepreneuriat Commercial | Montreal | $25,000 | Must operate a street-facing retail space in Montreal |
| ADAPT Fund (Prosper NWT) | Northwest Territories | $5,000 standalone | NWT-registered businesses only; up to $12,700–$15,100 with top-ups |
| PEI Small Business Investment Grant | Prince Edward Island | $3,750 | 15% of capital or technology spend, capped per fiscal year |
| ICTC WIL Digital | Canada-wide | $5,000–$7,000 | A student wage subsidy, not a project grant — funds a net-new placement |
That table is the honest answer to "is there a grant for my website." The amounts are in the low thousands, they are reimbursement-based, and they are decided by where you are registered. If none of them covers your province, the realistic options are the adjacent-purpose national programs above or a loan — not a smaller website grant you have not found yet.
CSBFP is a loan. The government guarantees up to 85% of it, which is why approval through your own bank is easier than a conventional loan. For an online business the eligible uses are the practical ones: warehouse and packing equipment, POS systems, servers, leasehold improvements, and website development treated as an intangible asset. Interest is prime + 3% plus a 2% registration fee, and you apply at a participating chartered bank, credit union or caisse populaire — not to the government.
Futurpreneur is a loan, and it is the single most frequently mislabelled program in Canadian e-commerce funding articles. It lends up to $75,000 repayable over five years, with two years of mentorship from a volunteer business owner in your sector. A BDC partnership can add another $75,000 — also a loan — for $150,000 of repayable financing. The terms beat a conventional bank and the mentorship is genuinely valuable for a first-time operator. It is still money you pay back. Separate streams exist for Black, Indigenous and newcomer founders, and a Side Hustle program lends up to $25,000.
These two account for most of the wrong advice on this topic, so they are worth stating precisely rather than quietly omitting.
CDAP — the Canada Digital Adoption Program — provided a $2,400 micro-grant plus access to a $100,000 interest-free BDC loan. It was wound down in 2025 after its allocation was distributed, and ISED has announced no direct replacement. If a page tells you to apply for the "$2,400 grant," it has not been updated since 2024.
Digital Main Street — Ontario’s $2,500 Digital Transformation Grant, with the free Digital Service Squad — is not "closed in some municipalities." The program ended March 31, 2024 and the Province of Ontario did not renew it. It remains the most commonly recommended e-commerce grant in Canada, and it has not existed for over two years.
What to do instead: check the regional table above for a program in your province, and if U.S. tariffs are part of why you are looking, start with RTRI rather than hunting for a CDAP successor that has not been announced.
45 of the 55 open digital-funding programs are scoped to a single province, territory or city. Here is what each region actually has right now — including the ones that have closed.
OCI Digitalization Competence Centre — the RMPG retail stream ($5,000) is open first-come first-served; the larger DMAP and TDP intakes are closed. Ontario Together Trade Fund (up to $5M, forgivable loan, $200K project floor) for tariff-impacted businesses, continuous intake. Ontario also stacks an 8% refundable OITC plus a 3.5% ORDTC on federal SR&ED. Closed: Digital Main Street (ended March 2024) and Starter Company Plus (between cohort rounds all year).
Ontario grants →ESSOR Component 1A (feasibility, up to $50,000, no revenue floor) and 1C (digital implementation, up to $50,000, needs $2.5M revenue and a completed 1B diagnostic), both rolling to March 2027. PME MTL Fonds Entrepreneuriat Commercial gives Montreal street-facing retailers up to $25,000 at 80% cost-share. Quebec’s CRIC adds 20–30% on top of federal SR&ED — the largest provincial R&D top-up in Canada.
Quebec grants →Alberta Export Expansion Program — up to $15,000 for trade events, continuous intake until the annual budget runs out, and you must submit within two months of the event. Alberta Manufacturing Productivity Grant (up to $30,000, matching) if you do any production. The Innovation Employment Grant adds 8% on R&D spend, rising to 20% above your two-year rolling average. PrairiesCan BSP handles larger scale-up projects.
Alberta grants →The thinnest province on this list right now. Innovate BC’s Go-To-Market Microgrant, Ignite, ISI and the Venture Acceleration Program are all closed. PacifiCan’s Business Scale-up and Productivity stream is also closed — it runs periodic windows and the last opened in March 2025. What remains open: the Export Navigator advisory service (free), Creative BC’s Project Development Fund for eligible sectors, and the federal programs above. BC does not run a general R&D top-up on SR&ED.
BC grants →ACOA Business Development Program ($25,000–$3M) and the REGI Business Scale-up stream are open — but note both are forgivable or repayable contributions, not grants, and ACOA’s commercial lending dropped sharply through the 2020s. Export Funding NB covers 65% of export costs to $15,000. PEI Small Business Investment Grant returns 15% of technology and equipment spend to $3,750. The Atlantic Innovation Fund is closed.
Atlantic grants →Disproportionately generous relative to population, and almost never mentioned. ADAPT Fund (Prosper NWT) is one of the few programs in Canada that will explicitly fund website development, e-commerce adoption and online payment setup — up to $5,000 standalone, $12,700–$15,100 with CanNor top-ups. SEED NWT Strategic Investments goes to $75,000. Nunavut’s Strategic Investments Program runs $50,000–$150,000; Yukon’s Economic Development Fund to $100,000.
ADAPT Fund record →Find the row that matches you. Every recommendation below was checked against the program’s live status on July 31, 2026.
| Program | Startup (<2 yrs) | Established (2+ yrs) | The gate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Futurpreneur (loan) | Yes — ideal fit | No | Age 18–39; business under 12 months |
| CSBFP (loan) | Yes | Yes | Under $10M revenue; your bank decides |
| CanExport SMEs | No — blocked | Yes — primary target | 3 employees + $300K in last complete tax year |
| RTRI | No | Yes — if tariff-hit | 3 years incorporated; 5–499 FTEs |
| IRAP | Sometimes | Yes — if tech-driven | Incorporated; genuine technological uncertainty |
| SR&ED | Yes — if custom tech | Yes — if custom tech | Technological advancement, not configuration |
Two scenarios with the arithmetic shown, and the caps that bite. These are illustrative worked examples, not case studies of specific businesses.
An established Alberta store — 5 employees, $800,000 in its last complete tax year, no prior German sales — plans a $70,000 market-entry project: a Berlin trade show, in-market research, German translation of its marketing, and an EU trademark filing. CanExport reimburses 50% of eligible costs, and the request must land between $10,000 and $50,000 — here, $35,000. Alberta Export Expansion covers trade-event costs up to $15,000. Note what is not in the budget: no Google Ads, no Shopify fees, no SEO, no hosting — all ineligible.
A Toronto marketplace runs a 12-month R&D project on a novel seller-matching algorithm: one developer at $120,000 fully loaded. IRAP covers up to 80% of eligible labour — here $96,000, which sits inside the $75,000–$200,000 band a first-time applicant typically sees. The company then files SR&ED on the remaining $24,000 of eligible R&D cost, returning 35% federally: about $8,400. Ontario’s OITC (8% refundable) adds roughly $1,900. The non-refundable ORDTC (3.5%) is worth another $840, but only against tax payable — so it is not cash.
The caps that decide whether a stack is legal. Total government assistance — federal, provincial and municipal combined — generally cannot exceed 75% of eligible project costs, and exceeding it means returning the excess. A company can receive at most $99,999 across all CanExport programs per federal fiscal year, and can hold only one active CanExport SMEs project at a time. IRAP and SR&ED cannot both claim the same dollar, though they can cover different parts of the same project. Disclose every other funding source in every application; undisclosed stacking is the fastest way to lose an approved contribution.
| Development Activity | SR&ED Eligible? | IRAP Eligible? | Likely Credit Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proprietary recommendation engine (ML-based) | Yes — strong case | Yes | 35% federal + provincial |
| Custom AI demand forecasting model | Yes — strong case | Yes + Scale AI eligible | 35%+ federal |
| Novel marketplace matching algorithm | Likely yes — confirm with specialist | Yes | 35% federal |
| Custom checkout / payment integration (standard methods) | No — standard development | No | Not eligible |
| Shopify theme customization or app configuration | No — routine work | No | Not eligible |
The best available grant for an export-minded online business in 2026 is CanExport SMEs — and the deciding factor is that your target market is not the United States.
Global Affairs has fully allocated the $3.1 million reserved for U.S.-targeted projects and stopped accepting new U.S. applications. The remaining budget is competing among projects aimed at the EU, Asia, LATAM and the Middle East only. If that describes your expansion, you are applying into a smaller field for a larger share, and the window is open until August 31, 2026. Two conditions decide whether it is worth starting: your revenue in your last complete tax year must be at least $300,000, and your project must be worth $20,000 to $100,000 so that your request lands in the $10,000–$50,000 band. Build the budget around a trade event, in-market research, translation and IP protection — never around your storefront, your ads or your SEO, which the program does not fund.
Each of these is either a program rule people miss, or a piece of outdated advice still circulating.
Online store development, platform subscriptions, marketplace fees, SEO and all advertising are named ineligible in the applicant’s guide. A budget built on them is rejected, and the rejection is not appealable — funding decisions are final.
It is your last complete tax year. Global Affairs states plainly that it does not grant exemptions for companies that did not reach $300,000 in that year. A business that peaked two years ago does not qualify.
CDAP wound down in 2025; Digital Main Street ended March 31, 2024. Both are still recommended across most e-commerce funding articles, and neither is available in any municipality.
Configuring Shopify does not qualify. Building a proprietary recommendation engine, a novel logistics optimiser, or AI personalisation on top of it can. The credit is 35% federal on the first $6 million, plus your provincial top-up.
ACOA, FedDev, PrairiesCan, PacifiCan and CED all use the word "contribution" for funding that is frequently repayable or forgivable-with-conditions. Check the repayment terms before you count it as a grant.
CanExport does not cover costs incurred before your application is submitted. IRAP does not fund R&D already underway. SR&ED closes 18 months after your fiscal year-end with no extensions. In all three, timing — not merit — is what disqualifies most claims.
Honest funding-type classification and live status as of July 31, 2026. Green badge = grant, blue = tax credit, amber = loan. Cost-share and full eligibility are on each program card above.
| Program | Who runs it | Amount | Type | Status | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CanExport SMEs | Global Affairs | $10K–$50K | Grant | Open to Aug 31 — U.S. closed | Entering a new non-U.S. market |
| RTRI | 7 RDAs | Up to $1M | Grant | Open, intakes vary | Tariff-hit sellers diversifying |
| IRAP | NRC | $75K–$200K (first) | Grant | Open, rolling | Genuine platform R&D |
| SR&ED | CRA | 35% ITC on first $6M | Tax Credit | Open, filed with T2 | Custom development |
| Scale AI Acceleration | Scale AI cluster | Up to $50K | Grant | Open via partners | Putting AI into production |
| ESSOR 1A / 1C | Investissement QC | Up to $50K each | Grant | Rolling to Mar 2027 | Quebec digital projects |
| OCI RMPG | Ontario Centre of Innovation | $5,000 | Grant | Open, first-come | Ontario retail digital work |
| CSBFP | ISED via your bank | Up to $1.15M | Loan | Open continuously | Equipment, fulfilment, space |
| Futurpreneur | Futurpreneur Canada | Up to $75K | Loan | Open, rolling | Founders aged 18–39 |
| Digital Main Street | Ontario | $2,500 | Was a grant | Ended Mar 2024 | Nothing — it is gone |
| CDAP | ISED | $2,400 | Was a grant | Wound down 2025 | Nothing — no replacement |
Premium shows approval likelihood, realistic amounts, and insider tips for every e-commerce program — plus tools to compare, track documents, and find stacking opportunities. See Premium Data →
Catalog figures counted July 31, 2026; program figures taken from the departments’ own published documents.
"The Trade Commissioner Service helps Canadian businesses, including e-commerce companies, take advantage of international trade opportunities. CanExport SMEs provides direct financial support to help small and medium-sized businesses develop new export markets."
— Trade Commissioner Service, CanExport SMEs Program
Catalog counts on this page were computed on July 31, 2026 from the 697-program GrantCompass database, filtered to programs whose stated purpose includes digital transformation or digital adoption. Program statuses were checked against each department’s own page. Where an official source is ambiguous or two official sources disagree, we say so rather than pick one silently.
Applications for programs like CanExport and IRAP reward specific structure and terminology, and a professional writer can help you get there. Two things to know before you hire one: CanExport explicitly will not reimburse the cost of preparing a CanExport application, so that fee comes entirely out of your own pocket on top of your 50% share — and when we checked around 20 Canadian grant firms in July 2026, not one published a price for CanExport application preparation. Ask for a fixed quote in writing before you engage anyone.
We could not find a single published price for CanExport application help from any Canadian grant firm — treat any quoted figure as negotiable.
The highest-value funding path available to a Canadian e-commerce business is IRAP plus SR&ED — and it is only available to companies that build technology rather than use it.
The arithmetic is why. IRAP covers up to 80% of eligible R&D labour, SR&ED returns 35% federally on what IRAP did not cover, and your provincial credit stacks on top of that — 20–30% in Quebec, 8% plus 3.5% in Ontario. On a $120,000 engineering project that is roughly $106,000 back in cash, against $50,000 as the absolute ceiling for the best pure-commerce grant on this page. That gap is not an accident of program design: Canada funds technological risk, and it does not fund retail operations. If your team is genuinely resolving technical uncertainty, this is where your effort belongs. If it is not, be honest about that and go after the export and tariff-response money instead — the programs are smaller, but the applications are far more likely to succeed than an IRAP pitch built on a Shopify build.
The points people get wrong most often, stated as answers rather than questions. Tap to expand.
Starter Company Plus, Innovate BC, PacifiCan BSP and the OCI DMAP stream are all between intakes. We will email you when they reopen — and when new e-commerce-relevant programs launch.