Root access, vital or not?

Is not having root access going to restrict us too much?

[tolachi]

I am considering getting a dedicated sever with the most commonly recommended hosting company around here. I noticed that they do not allow root access for security reasons. I'm worried that this is going to make it a pain to install certain programs that we need, or recompile php to include another extension, etc... I was wondering what the experience has been for other people using a dedicated without root access? Is it actually easy to work around or is it quite onerous?

Thanks.

[txbakers]

I install components too, and wouldn't be able to do it without root access.

It's a must have.