Why host your infrastructure in Costa Rica: a guide for regional and nearshore companies

Costa Rica has become a hub for nearshore operations: service centers, software teams and regional headquarters serving the United States and Latin America. Those operations need infrastructure close by. Here is why more companies are choosing to keep their servers, backups and connectivity in Costa Rica — and what to look for in a local data center.

1. A time zone that works with the Americas

Costa Rica is on UTC−6 all year, with no daylight saving changes. That lines up with US Central time for part of the year and stays within a couple of hours of both US coasts and most of Latin America. Your engineers, your provider's support team and your customers are awake at the same time — which matters when something needs to be fixed now.

2. Clean, mostly renewable electricity

Data centers use a lot of power, and where that power comes from is now part of many companies' sustainability reporting. Costa Rica's national grid is supplied almost entirely by renewable sources — hydro, geothermal, wind and solar. In 2025, 97.3 % of the electricity in the national system came from renewables. Hosting here helps lower the carbon footprint of your IT.

3. A regional crossroads

Between North and South America, Costa Rica is a natural point to serve Central America, the Caribbean and the north of South America. With regional backbone links, a server in San José can reach users across the isthmus with low latency, and connect to Miami for the rest of the world.

4. Talent and stability

The country is known for a stable democracy, a well-educated and largely bilingual workforce, and a mature technology sector. That makes it easier to find people who can operate and support infrastructure, in Spanish and English.

5. Data residency

For Costa Rican companies, keeping data in the country simplifies conversations with regulators, auditors and customers, and with Costa Rica's personal data protection law (Ley 8968). For regional companies, a Costa Rican site can be the primary location or a disaster-recovery site outside their own country.

What to check in a Costa Rican data center

• Certifications that apply to the actual facility — Tier III, Rated-3 (TIA-942), DCOS for operations, ISO 27001 for information security, PCI DSS if you process card payments.
• Power path — utility feeds, UPS redundancy (N+1 or better), generators and fuel autonomy.
• Carrier neutrality — several carriers and entrance rooms, so you are not tied to one network.
• 24/7 operations — people on duty, monitoring and documented escalation.
• Room to grow — space and power for the next three to five years.
• One partner for the stack — colocation, cloud, connectivity and security from the same provider simplify support.

Navégalo in a nutshell

Our data center in San José is Tier III and Rated-3 certified, our operations are certified DCOS-3, and we were carbon neutral in 2025 (see our environmental report). We offer colocation, cloud servers, dedicated connectivity and security from one team, with a backbone to Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia and Miami. If you are planning a nearshore operation or a regional DR site, we are happy to show you the facility.