Who hosts my website?

Your website runs on a server at a hosting provider, and the domain points there through DNS. A DNS lookup gives you the server's IP address, and a lookup on the IP address shows which company the address belongs to. Keep in mind that the domain and the hosting can be with two different companies.

Check invoices and email first

If your company pays for the hosting itself, the invoices are the quickest way to find out. Search your email and accounting records for the domain name and words like "hosting", "web hosting" and "server". Whoever sends the invoice is your hosting provider, unless it's a developer or another company reselling the hosting.

If you find nothing, someone else is paying for the hosting, for example a former developer. Then you have to find the provider through DNS.

Find the IP address with a DNS lookup

1. Open Google Admin Toolbox Dig in your browser.
2. Type in the domain name and choose A. The result is the server's IP address. Write it down.
3. Do the same for www.yourdomain.com. The two addresses can point to different places.
4. Choose NS. The result shows the name servers, which is where the domain's DNS is managed. That can be the registrar, Cloudflare or the hosting provider.
5. Choose MX. The result shows who handles your email. That can be a third company.

Find the owner of the IP address

1. Look up the IP address in the RIPE database. RIPE keeps records of IP addresses in Europe. Addresses assigned in other parts of the world are in one of the other regional registries, such as ARIN for North America. That is also where most of Cloudflare's addresses are.
2. Look at the netname, descr and org fields. They contain the name of the company that owns the address range.

A quicker option is to paste the IP address into ipinfo.io. It shows the company and the network (ASN) the address belongs to, whichever registry holds it.

Many smaller providers rent servers in large data centres, so the name you find may be the data centre and not the company you pay. You still learn where the site is physically hosted.

When the IP address belongs to Cloudflare

If the lookup shows that the address belongs to Cloudflare, the traffic goes through Cloudflare. DNS then returns Cloudflare's own IP addresses, and the real server is hidden. The real IP address is in the DNS settings of the Cloudflare account the domain was added to, so you need to find out who has that account.

Subdomains such as ftp., mail. or cpanel. often bypass Cloudflare and point straight to the server. Look them up in the Dig tool before you go further.

Name servers ending in ns.cloudflare.com only mean that the DNS is managed in a Cloudflare account. If the IP address belongs to another company, the traffic goes straight to the server, and the lookup above shows where the site runs.

Check the response headers

Many hosting providers add their own headers to the server's response. Run curl -sI https://example.com/, or open the Network tab in the developer tools (F12) and click the first request. Headers such as server, x-powered-by and x-cache, or headers with a company name in them, such as x-kinsta-cache, can reveal who runs the site.

Look for clues in WordPress

If you can log in to wp-admin, go to Plugins and see whether there is a tab called "Must-Use". Some hosting providers put their own plugins there, labelled with their company name.

When you're stuck

Once you know who the provider is, contact their support. If the hosting account belongs to a former developer or supplier, the provider won't give you access without the account owner's approval. Then you need documentation that the website and the domain belong to your company, and help from whoever owns the account.