When someone searches "hosting Paraguay," they're almost always at one of two moments: about to build their first website, or dealing with a slow one and suspecting the server. In both cases the real question is the same: where should your website live so it loads fast for your customers and doesn't cause you problems.
Domain, hosting, and email: three different things
People mix them up all the time, and it helps to keep them separate:
- The domain is the name: yourbusiness.com.py. It's paid yearly.
- Hosting is the server where the website's files live. It's paid monthly or yearly.
- Email is name@yourbusiness.com.py. It can come bundled with hosting or live in a separate service.
All three can be with the same provider or with three different ones. What matters is that the domain is under your name, because it's what points to everything else.
Why it matters where your website is served from
Every time someone opens your website, their phone requests the files from a server. If that server is far away, every request takes longer. On a lightweight page it's tenths of a second; on a heavy one, with a lot of requests, they add up and you notice.
Today, most fast sites don't rely on a single server: they use a content delivery network that stores copies of the page in many cities around the world and serves the closest one. For a Paraguayan business this is key, because some of those networks have nodes in Asunción.
We measured this with our own site. builttoclick.com is served from Cloudflare's network, and when we request it from San Lorenzo, the response comes out of the Asunción node: you can see it in the ASU code that shows up in the response headers. Since the HTML also started being cached at that node, the median time to first byte dropped from 180 to 127 milliseconds.
Types of hosting
| Type | What it is | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Shared | Your site shares a server with hundreds of others | Small sites that need a cPanel-type panel |
| VPS | A virtual server with reserved resources | Systems and stores with more traffic, with someone to manage it |
| Static on a content delivery network | Files served from nearby nodes, no database | Fast, secure business websites |
| Bundled with a platform | Wix, Shopify, and similar tools come with their own hosting | Anyone building their site on that platform |
There's no single best option for everything. A business website with services, photos, and contact info doesn't need a database that updates every second, and serving it as static files from a nearby node is usually the fastest option and the one that breaks the least.
Want us to build yours?We send you a free analysis of your business before we start.
Message me on WhatsApp →What to check before signing up for hosting
- Security certificate (SSL). The browser padlock. It has to come included and renew itself.
- Speed measured from Paraguay, not the plan's promise. We explain how to measure it below.
- Backups. Who makes them, how often, and how they're restored.
- Renewal price. A lot of plans have a promotional price the first year and renew at double.
- What happens if you want to leave. Your files have to be yours, and you have to be able to take them elsewhere.
- Support. In what language, during what hours, and through what channel.
- Email. If it comes with the hosting, what happens to it if you switch hosting providers.
How to measure your website's speed
You don't need to be technical to get an idea:
- PageSpeed Insights (from Google): paste in your address and it gives you a score for mobile and for desktop, with the issues ranked by importance. Pay attention to the mobile score above all.
- Test from your phone on mobile data, not the office wifi. That's how your customer opens it.
- Open it in a private window, so the browser doesn't use what it already had cached.
If the page takes more than three seconds to show something useful on a phone, the problem is almost never just the hosting. It's usually unoptimized images, too many plugins, or a heavy template. Switching hosting without fixing that won't be enough.
Email, better kept separate
Our recommendation is not to depend on hosting for email. Professional email services like Zoho Mail or Google Workspace are set up with your domain and keep working even if you switch hosting. That's what we use ourselves, and what we set up on client sites.
How we handle it
The websites we build are published as static sites on Cloudflare's network, with a node in Asunción, an automatic security certificate, and no plugins to update. Hosting, the domain, and two professional email accounts are included in the first year of the website package, and from the second year on they're part of the Gs. 1,500,000 annual payment. If you ever want to leave, you take the files and the domain with you, since it's always registered under your name.