Finding the hosting provider of a website isn’t as straightforward as finding someone’s email provider, but it’s certainly not impossible (at least not usually). With a bit of digital detective work and the right tools, you can often uncover this valuable information. This article describes multiple effective techniques that you can combine to identify the hosting provider behind almost any website.
Methods to find the Hosting Provider of a Website:
Why Do you Need to
Find the Hosting Provider of a Website?
➡️ There are several reasons why you might need to find the hosting provider of a website, but the most common one is website migration.
What happens surprisingly often is that a business owner or a new marketing manager inherits a website that’s been around for a while. They’re all set to give it a fresh look or update outdated information. But as soon as they begin, they hit a major roadblock: there are no website credentials available and they have no clue where the website is actually hosted.
In most cases, the person who originally created the website is long gone and not answering emails or calls. If this person prepaid for several years of hosting before their departure, then there might not even be any invoices to check. This situation is essentially a ticking time bomb because the hosting could run out at any moment. That’s why it’s so important to find the hosting provider, check the current contract and possibly migrate to new provider.
Other reasons why people need to find the hosting provider of a website include security and legal issues. For example, you might stumble on a page that’s spreading dangerous malware on purpose, hosting illegal content, spreading wrong information about your business or actively pursues copryright violation. Identifying the hosting provider allows you to report these websites or take legal actions against the website owner.
Best Methods to
Find the Hosting Provider of Any Website
➡️ By trying the methods below, you have a good chance of finding the hosting provider for most websites.
However, the word “most” in the sentence above is important because it’s entirely possible for information about a hosting provider to be completely hidden, especially if the website owner wants it that way. They can use a service like Cloudflare to hide their origin server IP address and effectively render some methods for finding a website’s hosting provider useless. Also, some domain registrars offer similar privacy protection as a free or paid add-on.
➡️ That said, you shouldn’t let the possibility of the hosting provider information being hidden deter you – there’s a good chance that luck will be on your side!
Method 01: WHOIS Lookup
WHOIS is like the phonebook of the internet (remember those?). It’s a query and response protocol that provides information about registered domain names. More specifically, it can tell you who owns a website and its domain name. To perform a WHOIS lookup, you need a reliable lookup tool, and the one provided by ICANN is an excellent choice.
Here’s how to find the hosting provider of a website using WHOIS lookup:
1. Open ICANN’s WHOIS lookup tool in your web browser.
2. Enter the domain name you’re investigating and click on Lookup.
3. Look for information in the results related to “Nameservers” or “NS”.
Here are the results for our own domain, mailjerry.com:
Nameservers:
NS1.INTERNEX.AT
NS2.INTERNEX.AT
NS3.INTERNEX.AT
NS4.INTERNEX.AT
If the information in the section “Nameservers” does not help, scroll down to the Contact Information and look for the Technical contact. Here, you find information about the company that is managing the domain.
➡️ In most cases, the domain techincan is the same organisation that is hosting your website. And in case your website and domain are not managed by the same company, you can at least reach out to the technical domain contact and ask for further information about the hosting provider.
Method 02: Check the SSL Certificate
If the WHOIS lookup didn’t spill the beans, then you should check the SSL certificate instead. SSL certificates are digital certificates that provide secure, encrypted communications between a website and an internet browser. Beyond encryption, SSL certificates contain information about the certificate’s owner, which can sometimes include details about the hosting provider.
To check a website’s SSL certificate, you need to:
1. Visit the website you are investigating.
2. Click on the padlock icon next to the URL in the address bar.
3. Look for an option like “Certificate” or “Connection is secure.” The exact wording might vary depending on your browser.
4. Click on that option to view the certificate details.
You might see something like:
In the section “Issued To”, you’ll probably find the Organisation Unit name the certificate is issued to. This company name might give you a clue about where the certificate was registered and where the website is hosted.
Unfortunately, this level of detail is typically only displayed for Extended Validation (EV) certificates. These are the cream of the crop in SSL land, used by big companies who want to show off their credibility.
For most websites you’ll encounter (like in the example above), you’re more likely to see a Domain Validated (DV) certificate. They’ll only show you the domain name (which you already know) and the certification authority in the section “Issued By”.
➡️ This knowledge might help you find an old SSL confirmation email lurking in your inbox or give you a hint about who registered the certificate and probably hosts or knows who hosts your website.
Method 03: Manually Search the Server’s IP Address Online
If the first two methods left you empty-handed, we’ve got another trick up our sleeve: manually searching the server’s IP address. You might discover other domains that share the same IP and then continue from there until you learn who the provider of shared web hosting behind them is.
Simply follow this tutorial to find your server’s IP address:
Once you have the IP address, you can search it online using Google to gather more information. You can start by simply entering the IP address into the Google search bar.
You can also take things a step further by using advanced search operators to refine your search, such as by searching for the exact IP using quotation marks: “136.243.163.156”.
It’s quite likely that you’ll find a search result that points to the hosting provider of your website.
Final Thoughts:
Is it Possible to Find the Provider of a Website?
✅ As we’ve demonstrated, it’s often possible to find the hosting provider of a website in just a few simple steps. If you’re interested in this information because you want to migrate your own website to a different provider, then you shouldn’t forget about your email because website hosting and email hosting go hand in hand.
MailJerry is an easy to use email migration tool that makes email migration smooth and hassle-free. With MailJerry, you can reliably and securely migrate all your emails to their new destination with a simple click, and the tool can keep your mailboxes synchronized even after the migration.
