Choosing a Web Hosting Provider - Ensure SFTP and SSH Are Supported

SUMMARY: Your web hosting provider should support SFTP and SSH for added security.

If you are choosing between web hosting providers that allow you to access your site via a shell account, be sure to get one that supports the SSH and SFTP protocols as well as telnet and ftp. SSH is a more secure way of connecting to a shell account over telnet, and SFTP is more secure than ftp. SSH and SFTP encrypt data traveling over the Internet as opposed to telnet and ftp which transfer information (including passwords) in plain text.

If your web host supports these protocols, you will need SSH and SFTP clients to connect to your system. Here are some such client software packages. Note this list is for informational purposes only:

MacSSH and MacSFTP (Macintosh): http://www.macssh.com

Portable SSH (Unix or Windows with Cygwin): http://www.openssh.org/portable.html

Putty (Unix and Windows): http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

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