People let me tell you that FTP service is nothing new and has been around since the invention of the Internet. 99.98% of web hosting companies offer FTP access of some kind. Don't let them fool you with an 'FTP Manager' or something that is really just an internal page uploader. To have a true website you need to have external FTP access.
Recently, we had noticed that some of our customers FTP Upload on their links pages were failing. No one had changed the information so I decided to check the hosting company's website to see if they offer FTP. They did. Okay so if they offer FTP then something must be wrong with that users FTP.
I contacted support (while still surfing their help files) to ask why the FTP was failing. Below is a copy of the entire transcript.
I tried to explain to their staff the gravity of their decision and asked them if there was anyone I could talk to about our company providing it for their users. This might be a good source of new hosting customers for us. If your web host doesn't offer FTP access contact us today and we can provide you with legitimate business hosting.
I’ve seen IT departments go from centralized, to decentralized to centralized again. From in house to outsourced and back again.
Any group in a company that starts putting its own interests ahead of the company’s best interests is eventually either going to lose or take down the company; especially small ones. Unfortunately, too many IT departments see themselves as risk minimizers and not business enablers.