At first, you might think it’s difficult to find a website host. In fact, the question “where is a website hosted?” can have a few different answers. That’s because hosting consists of a variety of different services. Sometimes all of them will be provided by the same company, but it’s not unusual to have a site that has its hosting services provided by several different companies.
For example, a website can have
- domain registration with one company
- a Domain Name System (DNS) hosted on a private server
- web hosting and Content Delivery Network (CDN) by two different companies
Now, if I made figuring out a website’s hosting service look like an impossible mission, I’m sorry; it’s not. In reality, it’s quite easy, given you know what to look for and how to do it. That’s exactly what I will be talking to you about in this article.
Why Would You Need This Information?
There are several reasons why you would need to find this type of information:
- You need to send a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notice to the host of a website that’s stealing your content
- You don’t remember your own website’s hosting service
- You bought a pre-made webpage and you didn’t ask the previous owner for hosting information
- You like the performance of another website and you want to know where it’s hosted so that you can move your own page there.
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How to See Who Hosts a Website
One of the things I love most about technology is the opportunity to do one thing in a variety of ways. There are multiple different ways in which you can find the hosting information of a website.
Let’s take a look at them.
Using a dedicated tool
Online you can find a ton of tools created specifically to help users find details about a website’s hosting services. One of the best free ones, in my opinion, is the WPBeginner Theme Detector Tool.
It’s an application that tells you what WordPress theme a given web page is using, while also showing information about who is hosting the website.
Using a specific website
Along with tools, there are also websites that help you find the host of any page. Most of the online tools require only the URL of the website to give you all the hosting service information. However, loads of these websites require payment to be used.
Using WHOIS tools
WHOIS is a public directory that lets you look up the hosting service of most websites. In order to use it, you simply need to head over to the website who. is and type in the website URL that you want to get information about. You will then be redirected to a screen that looks like this:
Now, let’s break down all the important fields here and what they mean.
Registrar Info
With WHOIS you can check the domain registration provider of a website. It’s usually under the “registrar” or “reseller” field.
This is a service mainly responsible for ensuring that the name of the site is owned by the people who own the website as well. However, that does not include all the “backend” information such as code, fields, database, etc.
Name Servers
They determine where the DNS of a website is hosted. The DNS’s main responsibility is to translate domain names to IP addresses and thus help us reach webpages without needing to remember a bunch of numbers. For example, the DNS is what translates “www.google.com” to 216.58.206.206, thus allowing the computer to reach the Google search engine.
Other ways to find a website host
Using online tools is an easy way to find the hosting information of a website; however, it does take a bit of knowledge and a bit of research. If you want to skip that part, there are a few other ways to find the website host of a page on the Internet.
Use the contact form on the website
Most websites nowadays have a contact form available for questions. You can use it to send an inquiry to the site owners or their team and ask about the hosting service they are using. It’s good to also explain why you would need that information, otherwise, they may not answer or may get suspicious.
Look for it on the website
An alternate idea is to look for the information at the bottom of the website or on the “About Us” page. Usually, there is a message stating “Powered by …” or “Hosted on…”.
Searching for the hosting information of a site that you own is a lot easier. One of the ways to do it is through your billing records, as it’s highly likely you’ve paid for it in the past. If you can’t find it there, you can always ask the developers who helped create your website as most of them usually have preferred hosting services that they work with.
If the site was created by another person and you bought it off him or her, you can always reach out to the previous owner and ask about the website host.
I hope that this article gave you directions on how to find hosting services information when you need it. I provided you with several alternative methods and you can choose the one that best fits your way of working or the level of details needed.