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