How to Find Out Who is Hosting a Certain Website (3 Ways)

Have you ever wanted to know which web hosting service a website is using?

There are many reasons why you would want to know who is hosting a website. It is a common concern for beginners who hired someone to set up their website initially. You might also want to find out who is hosting your competitor’s website.

In this article, we will show you how to find out who is hosting a certain website.

Why Find Out Who is Hosting a Website?

All websites on the internet need web hosting. This is where all the files for a website are stored.

Website hosting is different than a domain name. A domain name is the address of a website, e.g., wpbeginner.com.

Finding out who is hosting a website is not that difficult because this information is publicly available.

There are several scenarios when you may need to find out the website hosting service behind a site:

• A WordPress developer built a website for you. They forgot to tell you who the web host is, or you lost the details.
• You set up your WordPress website a long time ago. You can’t remember who is hosting it.
• You’ve seen a website that is fast and performs well. You want to know who the host is so you can use their services as well.
• Another website is stealing your content, and you want to send a DMCA takedown notice to their host.

There are multiple ways to find out who is hosting a website. We will show you the two most straightforward ways to quickly learn which hosting company a website is using.

Method 1: Use the WPBeginner Theme Detector Tool

Our WordPress Theme Detector tool is a great way to detect what WordPress theme a site is using. It also tells you who is hosting a website.

To use it, simply go to the WordPress Theme Detector Tool page and type in the URL (domain name) of the site:

Click on the ‘Analyze Website’ button to continue.

In just a couple of seconds, you will see details about the website. This includes the name of the hosting provider:

Here are some names you may see coming up:

• Unified Layer: Newfold Digital (known previously as EIG – Endurance International Group) hosts these sites. Newfold Digital is the company behind Bluehost and HostGator. They also own several other smaller web hosting brands.
• New Dream Network, LLC: DreamHost
• Media Temple: Media Temple is a web hosting company owned by GoDaddy

In some cases, the theme detector may be unable to tell you the host. For instance, when a website is using a CDN service or a website firewall.

These services route all website traffic through their own servers, which means all hosting detector tools will show them as the hosting provider.

One popular CDN service is Cloudflare. They offer a free CDN service, which is used by many websites.

You may also see Sucuri, which is a website security and firewall service with its own CDN servers.

For instance, If you look up wpbeginner.com using the theme detector tool, then it will show Cloudflare as the hosting provider.

We do use Sucuri for our firewall, but WPBeginner is hosted by SiteGround and utilizes Cloudflare’s edge network as the CDN.

If the theme detector isn’t giving you a clear answer, then the second method in this guide can help. It will show you how to dig deeper to find the real hosting company behind a website.

Method 2: Using WHOIS Tools to Find Who is Hosting a Website

Another way to find out a website’s host is to look at their WHOIS information. WHOIS is like a public directory. It lets you look up ‘who is’ responsible for a website.

What is Whois Information?

Most domain names on the internet are managed by a global organization called ICANN. They keep a public directory of all website data, which also includes information about where a website may be hosted.

This is publicly available information, and there are many tools for looking up Whois information on any website on the Internet.

First, you need to go to the WHOIS Lookup tool by Domain.com. Then, simply type in the URL of the website to look it up.

You will see a list of information about the domain name.

You just need to look for a ‘Name Server’ entry. This lets you know who is hosting the site:

In this case, the host is DreamHost. To find out what web host the nameserver relates to, simply search for the nameserver on Google.

Again, you may not always be able to find out the host information. The nameservers may be set for a CDN instead, like Cloudflare.

Method 3: Use The IsItWP Theme Detect Tool

IsItWP offers a bunch of tools for WordPress users where you can just enter a domain name, and it will show you a bunch of useful information about that website.

Simply go to the IsItWP website and enter the domain name.

On the next page, IsItWP will tell you whether or not that site is using WordPress.

It will also show you the website’s hosting information.

If the site is using WordPress, it will also show you the WordPress plugins or theme that a particular website is using.

Other Ways to Find a Website’s Host

These methods are a little more time-consuming. However, they are worth trying if you cannot find the host using the above-quick methods.

For your own website, you could check your billing records. You have likely been billed for the hosting.

You could also contact whoever set up your website. If you aren’t able to contact them, then check through any information they have sent you in the past.

Finding out who hosts someone else’s website can be harder.

First, you could search the website for information about the web host. This might be on the ‘About’ page or in the footer. For instance, the WPBeginner footer shows that our site is hosted by SiteGround:

If you still can’t find any information, then you could contact the website owner or editor.

You will normally find a contact form on most websites that you can use to reach out. Explain that you like their website and that you wondered who is hosting it.

We hope this article helped you learn how to find out who is hosting a certain website. If you need help finding a great hosting service, then check out our guide on how to choose the best WordPress hosting service or our comparison of the best WooCommerce hosting companies.

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