Locaweb.com.br review

First impression

Locaweb is a Brazilian hosting services provider that was founded in 1998 by cousins Claudio Gora and Gilberto Mautner, with the idea to build a B2B portal for the textile sector. This venture however didn’t work out, and in 19999 they decided to rather offer website hosting to Brazilian companies and have grown from strength to strength ever since. Today they employ more than 4000 people and host over 340,000 websites. They currently offer Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, Domain Registrations, Email Solutions, and Digital Marketing services.

Trial Period

Unfortunately, Locaweb doesn’t offer any free trial periods on their Shared and VPS Hosting plans for users to try them out before committing to a subscription, but they do however offer a 15-day free trial on their Website Builder plans. Simply sign up for the trial, create your website and if you like it, subscribe to keep it active.

Billing Cycle

Users can opt to pay for their Shared Hosting plans on a monthly, quarterly, yearly, or triennial basis, whereas VPS/VDS plans are limited to monthly and quarterly commitments, with slight discounts available for longer terms.

Accepted payment methods include major credit cards like Visa, Mastercard, Diners Club, American Express, and Boleto, a widely used cash-based payment system in Brazil.

Control Panel

Locaweb includes the Control Web Panel (CWP) in all their hosting plans. This control panel, formerly known as CentOS Web Panel, is a server administration software for Linux systems and offers a long list of features for managing an unmanaged server directly from a web browser.

Limits

Their Shared Hosting plans offer unlimited storage and bandwidth, a free SSL certificate by Let’s Encrypt, and Daily Backups with a rolling 30-day restore option. You can choose from 7 different plans, each varying in the number of POP/IMAP email accounts and databases allocated. Starting with the Go Hosting plan, which includes 1x 10GB POP/IMAP email account and 5x MySQL/PostgreSQL databases, and going up to the top-tier plan, the Dedicated Hosting, which offers 100x 10GB POP/IMAP email accounts and unlimited MySQL/PostgreSQL databases. It's important to note that the Dedicated Hosting plan is the only one with fast SSD drives; the others use standard HDDs.

For VPS plans, they have 2 options, Linux or Windows, which came as a bit of a surprise as most hosting providers offer multiple VPS plans. The Linux plan comes with 1x vCPU, 20GB SSD disk space, and 1TB bandwidth, while the Windows plan offers 2x vCPUs, 90GB SSD disk space, and 2TB bandwidth. You can however customize the amount of RAM and disc space allocated on each plan. Both plans include a static IP, Snapshot restore feature and run on Intel Xeon E5 processors.

Website Builder

Locaweb provides its own website builder, the Website Creator, at no extra cost with all their Shared Hosting plans. This drag-and-drop builder boasts a user-friendly interface, equipped with all the essentials for crafting a polished website. Much like other contemporary builders, it offers a wide array of customizable templates to choose from, or you can opt to start from scratch and unleash your creativity. In my experience, it's one of the more impressive builders out there. Besides the Shared Hosting plans that include the builder, there are also dedicated builder plans available that include disc space and emails.

Security

Security comes in the form of free Anti-Spam software, complimentary SSL certificates by Let’s Encrypt, as well as advanced DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack protection at the data center management layer. They also block port 25 by default, a common practice by service providers nowadays as an anti-spam technique, since it's used in MX spamming and abuse of open proxy/relay machines.

OS

Their Shared Hosting plans are powered by the Rocky Linux 8 operating system, an open-source enterprise operating system engineered to be fully compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For Windows-based plans, they use Windows Server 2022. Conversely, their VPS plans provide users with a selection of operating systems including Ubuntu 20.4, Debian 10 / 11, Rocky Linux 8, AlmaLinux 8, or Windows Server 2016 / 2022.

Support

They provide expert support around the clock through Phone, Email, a Ticketing System, Live Chat, or WhatsApp. Their agents are highly trained, professional, and prompt in their responses. However, there's a drawback - their support is only available in Portuguese, so the language barrier might be an issue. You can anticipate a response time of 30 seconds on Live Chat and about an hour on Email and Support Tickets.

Conclusion

If you reside in Brazil and speak Portuguese, Locaweb offers affordable and dependable hosting plans that suit your needs perfectly. However, if you're not fluent in Portuguese, the language barrier could pose a challenge, and you might want to explore other options instead.