Do you want to migrate your website and transfer your domain name but you don’t know which service you’re using? Or are you just curious to know where a website is hosted?
Web hosting can feel like an alien world to anyone who’s not got an extensive background in web development.
Either way, you have come to the right place. In this article, we will show you how to discover which hosting company manages a website.
How to find out who hosts a website?
In practice, there are two ways to approach this – manually or by using an online tool. You are going to learn about both of these methods, so just pick the one that suits you best.
Finding a website’s hosting provider
In order to manually discover the web hosting company of a website, you can either ping the website’s IP address or use the WHOIS method.
Using a website’s IP address
In this example, we’ll be using the Windows Console, but the same method will work for macOS operating systems as well.
- Open your system console. Type ping and write down the domain name that you want to check. Then, hit Enter.
- Copy the IP address from the terminal app and open your web browser.
- Go to an IP lookup tool, such as WhatIsMyIP, and paste the IP address you’ve found into the search box.
The results show you the hosting provider in charge of the website hosting, along with other details, like the server location, domain host, name servers and registrar, and so on.
Using the WHOIS method
This method is simpler, since all the info will be displayed neatly in the terminal app.
However, the only difference is that you have to use the whois command instead.
Keep in mind that some Windows computers don’t have this command included by default so you will need to install the prerequisites.
Simply go to the official Microsoft download page and download the installation file there.
Once the package is installed, you can follow the instructions below:
- Open your system console. Type whois and specify the website that you want to get the domain name and IP address information from. Hit Enter.
- Scroll down to see all the information about the website, from the hosting companies involved (for both domain host and the website hosting) to the other potential domain names, the domain name servers, and so on.
Online tools to use to find who hosts a website
If using previous methods seem somewhat overwhelming, you can try using an online tool to find a website’s domain host information. All you have to do is enter the website’s address and the rest will be done for you.
Thankfully, there are a lot of options available, such as:
- Hosting Checker or WhoIsHostingThis. A user-friendly tool that provides information about the website’s web host, including domain information, domain and site server locations, and IP address.
- Site Checker Pro. This online tool will not only tell you where a site is hosted but will provide WHOIS record information that includes details about the registrar itself, creation date, and domain name expiry date.
Why can’t I find out who hosts a website?
Some website owners deliberately hide specific details, such as their domain name server, so you can’t see who’s actually hosting the website.
This data is usually replaced by the name server details of a DNS (Domain Name Server). Here’s an example of dns records that you might find:
ns1.cloudflare.com
ns2.cloudflare.com
These nameservers are owned by a DNS company called Cloudflare.
In this case, you can only see the information only if you have the website’s login credentials on Cloudflare.
If you do, simply sign in and look for the A record that points to the real nameserver of your hosting company.
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