SSH, which is an abbreviation for Secure Shell, is a network protocol that is used to transfer encoded information between a client and a website hosting server, making it impossible for unauthorized parties to intercept any info. Many tech-savvy customers opt for SSH because of the improved level of security. The connection is made and the commands are sent via a command line. The available options depend on the type of web hosting service - on a shared server, in particular, files can be transferred or deleted, databases may be imported and exported, and archives can be created or unpacked. On a virtual or a dedicated server, the choices are much more - the web server and the database server could be started/stopped/rebooted, server-side software could be installed and a lot more. These things aren't possible on a shared server, for the reason that full root access is needed and all the other clients on that server will be affected. Though SSH is employed largely with UNIX-like OSs, there are SSH clients for other OSs as well - Windows, Mac OS, and so forth.