Secure Shell, commonly known as SSH, is a cryptographic network protocol that is used to execute commands on a remote machine or to exchange data between a server and a client. Due to the fact that the information exchanged by the 2 sides is encoded, a third party simply cannot intercept it, which makes SSH a favorite means of controlling an Internet hosting account. The commands that can be executed depend on the type of hosting service. On a shared hosting server, in particular, the choices are limited since you will not have root access to the server, so you can only create/move/delete files, set up and unpack archives, import and export databases, etcetera. They're all actions that are carried out in the shared hosting account and do not need a higher level of access. By using a virtual or a dedicated server, you shall have the ability to install server-side software or to restart the server or only a particular service (web server, database server, etc.). SSH commands are submitted via a command line, but if you don't employ a UNIX-like Operating System, there are tons of applications for other OSs, that you can employ to connect to the remote web server as well.