Maybe it's just my old Unix admin background, but I've always found SSH to be an invaluable tool in resolving certain issues on my client domains...

There are, however a number of hosts that don't support it under any circumstances and I was wondering whether most of you felt this to be an issue or not?

--marcel

To be honest, I am a reseller host for past four years and never saw a need for SSH. May be its only me..

I personally love to SSH. I'm a commandline nix guy myself too. However, you are right, most hosts aren't offering it for Resellers anymore.

The two big reasons are:
1) VPS/Semi-Dedicated plans give you SSH and usually Root to your own partition.

2) SSH is a huge security risk and paying a little premium over the Shared Hosting packages don't cover the costs involved for the SSH user's mistakes and the abuser every so often.

Without SSH you can feel a bit too dependant on the host's support, but then you could always upgrade to a VPS or Dedicated I suppose.

When I first used shared/reseller hosting years ago and didn't have SSH, I wondered what all the fuss is about.

Now I start cursing everytime I need to do something on a server that isn't mine and I don't have access to it. Once you start, you'll never want to go back - it's just far too handy and saves so much time :)

For reseller packages I personally wouldn't use (or offer) SSH, however for VPS and dedicated packages I always use SSH - I'm fairly new to command line interfaces, and love them!

I'm not that bad with command line, but I've just started using SSH with my Master Reseller. I mainly use it for backing up my hosting to another one.

Most hosts don't offer it in shared/reseller plans because of the security risk. I do find it useful for some tasks, but for a general shared website there shouldn't be any need for it.

Well the big thing about allowing a reseller to grant SSH is reseller tend not to screen their customers very much if at all generally. So most companies if they give resellers SSH they ask for a reason for each account each time. Well that's what I've noticed and what we do, but I could be wrong there may be some who just give it our to everyone.

Many hosting control panels make it so easy nowadays people can run decent sized reseller hosting operations without ever needing to touch the command line. It seems most of the heavy server administration for which you'd definitely need SSH, is handled by the main provider.

On the other hand, if you are a developer, you may have a reseller account for yourself for testing purposes and heavily use SSH. Most resellers probably don't need it, however.

Back in the days before my current company, I didn't know what I was missing. I code all my sites (PHP, Python) in Vim via SSH. Yes, I code via Vim. Is that old school? Maybe, but it has never let me down.

Back in the days before my current company, I didn't know what I was missing. I code all my sites (PHP, Python) in Vim via SSH. Yes, I code via Vim. Is that old school? Maybe, but it has never let me down.
It's just not efficient at all.
Noone would use vim to do coding for a web project.

Never.

However I have used SSH on my VPS a few times.

It's just not efficient at all.
Noone would use vim to do coding for a web project.

Sure they would. I hosted a couple of MUDs as a favor for awhile. I gave one of the developers a chown'd user account and let him SSH in. He did a lot of his coding there...in C.

I hate VI though. I like pico or nano. I guess I'm just a simple guy.

It's just not efficient at all.
Noone would use vim to do coding for a web project.

Actually, we had a very experienced Web developer that coded exclusively using vi. It was unbelievable due to all the resources available to him for coding Web applications. He was quite good, however.

ssh is indispensable sometimes for security issues and performance problem diagnosis.

All the time, one of the things I look for is access even jailed is better then none.

Thanks for all who replied.

I think the decision breaks down something like:

- If you're a competent unix admin or developer, SSH can prove invaluable when things just don't work or when you're trying to working out the details of some less than trivial development task.

- If you are providing pure "hosting", then you may never use it.

I would prefer a model where the hosting company would let me request SSH access for some constrained period of time.. or let me turn it on and off by account via CPanel. I'm perfectly willing to have them check me out, provide my credentials to get this to happen.. The blanket "No way.. ever" response doesn't impress me as a company that is willing to support the needs of their more capable customers

--marcel

Maybe it's just my old Unix admin background, but I've always found SSH to be an invaluable tool in resolving certain issues on my client domains...

There are, however a number of hosts that don't support it under any circumstances and I was wondering whether most of you felt this to be an issue or not?

--marcel

I'm in the same boat as you. I have a technical background and would only go with a host with SSH access.

I get really spoiled with SSH as I use it for programming. When I have to work on somebody's server that is not mine I have to use FTP again :( It's hard to work without SSH if you are very native to using VI as your text editor.