Aseem Kishore · October 20, 2014 · 3 min read Here’s a quick little tip for anyone looking for a simple way to find out who is hosting a particular website. Trying to figure out who hosts a web site can be an annoying task if you’re trying to go through the usual channels by searching a WHOIS database, etc. A lot of times you’ll only get the company or person that registered the domain name, but not the actual hosting company.
Who is Hosting This? is a very simple web service whose sole purpose is to tell you the company that is hosting a website. I really like this because most of the other online web site checking tools simply do not give a clear and concise answer to this very simple question.
I came across this website because I was looking for a for better hosting company, but I first wanted to know what hosting companies some peer sites in my field were using, such as HowToGeek, Labnol.org, etc. I know those sites run smoothly and have millions of visitors every month, so if their servers can handle that traffic, I would be more inclined to go with one of those hosting companies.
Once you type in a domain name, for example, labnol.org, you’ll get your answer right away:
DreamHost is actually the hosting company for the Digital Inspiration website. I’ve tried it on a good number of sites and the results have been correct each time. Also, very large sites like Google.com, etc. will not give you any useful information because they have their own IP address ranges and use their own servers. You’ll also see this for other companies like CNET, etc because they manage all of their own hosting.
In addition to websites like Google and Facebook, you may also run into smaller websites that use private registration or extra privacy settings at their hosting company. When a domain is private, the information is hidden from public view and you’ll only see information about the company that is being used to hide the registration or nothing at all, like in the example below:
This site does a pretty good job because you can sometimes tell the hosting company by looking at the Name Servers, but here they are simply using the domain name and not the name of the hosting website. Even if you click on the WHOIS link, everything is privately registered.
If you try to look up the IP address, you will have more luck. Once I did a WHOIS lookup on the IP address, I was able to determine the hosting company. You can also try another website like WebHostingHero. Their site was able to give me the correct info.
That’s about it! Overall, you should really run into very few issues when trying to determine the hosting company for a website. If you do, someone is really trying hard to hide his/her server from the public. If you have any questions, post a comment. Enjoy!
