I'm moving from the reprehensible, horrible host known as site5, and to a new hosting company....yeah I had to bash them a little because of their service....anyway, all hosts I've been to either had gzip there, or installed it upon my request. This new host I'm looking into says they don't have it, and they are not really interested in it...hopefully I can change their mind since they didn't give me a hard no.

Their response to me was they don't have mod_gzip but "You can use php's own compression capabilities." I have no idea what that is. So my question is this; Are these php compression capabilities as good as gzip or better? Are there draw backs? Is it as easy to implement across an entire site?

Before the responses, yes I know I can probably hunt for another host, but I'd like an answer to this question in particular.

Thanks.