Upload files as ZIP

From my experience using a decent dedicated server, anything too large results in timeouts or white screens - usually when importing anything over 1MB, so I wonder if ZIPs might end up creating similar issues as it encourages large uploads. As a result, I tend to just break down a large CSV file into smaller chunks and do 3 or 4 uploads instead of one

Obviously might just be something I need to change on my server's setup, but I've already increased memory to 100MB+ and timeouts to 120 seconds, and know that most shared server enviornemnt don't allow for changes to these sort of settings in php,ini etc

Stu