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How much do you value SSH Login for Shared Hosting / Web Hosting?
So I am thinking about granting my customers (jailed) ssh access to manage their webspace. How important would that be for you as a customer? Is this something that is crucial to you?
Also Providers, how much abuse did you get from granting SSH access to customers of Shared Hosting? I have heard a lot abuse stories but given that I will cater to the German market only in the future (as of September 15th) and setup individual contracts for my clients (with requiring ID proof) I thought I could consider granting them that extra bit of freedom, given that due to all the steps taken abuse should be pretty limited, right?
Looking forward to your feedback (ofc also if you are not from Germany :P )
Comments
Any of my shared hosting companies provided me with ssh access and it was fine to me because panels provide us all the needed domain management.
Usually average users won't know what to do with that access.
What kind of customers do you have?
For me, it is almost mandatory. It is very easy with jailed access to perform several tasks like rsync, scp, crons, mysql etc., much more easy than from a panel like cpanel or plex...
some nerd dont like Gui, Gui is easy for use but sometime is time consumable (at least for me). thats why ssh access its very important for customer.
but i like to see provider perspective too.
I've never had a problem with giving jailed SSH access. Doubt many people would even notice it's enabled unless they actually need it unless their sole intent is for abuse..
It's useful when I want to migrate websites.
Not very. Got used to the boilerplate FTP/s setup. I don't host anything complicated or big in shared hosting environments, nor would I.
That's it haha!
When I recently migrated a website from a non-ssh enabled shared host I realized that it can be really a pita to do so with the use of a cp (GUI) only.
Both geeks and no geeks :P For the geeks it may be of use
I don't grant it for customers, and out of a few hundred, only two have requested it - so I don't think it's too important for the average customer
The users here will probably answer that they need it, Joe with the corner pawn shop won't.
Most have problems to even sort out a regular FTP.
From the different web hosting forums I visit (Swedish), 99,9% don't need it and if they had it, wouldn't know what to do with it.
The user base here is a bit more tech savy.
Last week I have to migrate an account from Hostgator, they just allow outbound connections to port 22, if your server is in a different port you have to open a ticket.
As this is used for easier and faster migrations (in and out), I don't know how it can affect your service.
Guess I might offer it on upon request then :P
I had no-SSH hosting for over a decade. I got used to it, but it was annoying to perform many tasks. I don't think I could handle that for long these days.
Tasks such as?
Backing up data offsite- such as MySQL, filesystem snapshots, etc. Fixing file permissions because the FTP service didn't allow you to set umask, etc.. even a very limited shell with only a handful of tools is much preferred to not having it.
I'm not going to pretend that I'm your standard "Install WordPress and forget it" user, though.
I have it enabled for every customer - and surprisingly many customers actually use it.
And I love it whenever I migrate people from other providers, that I can just ssh in and rsync the stuff over.
A few devs that deal with Magento and CMS frameworks that require composer and cli management would certainly welcome it, however they usually own a small dev VPS so can't say about the value preposition here.