Best move I did for a past client was getting them to deploy using Assembla's FTP tool. There is essentially a post-commit hook in their SVN repo that automatically pushes to the test environment on every commit. Deployments to prod use the same tool, but it is manually triggered rather than on every commit. (Competing for best move, was getting them to have separate test and prod environments.)

If you (or an unfortunate client) are using a cheap shared host that only provides you with FTP, this approach at least guarantees that the only code on the site is what exists in your VCS.