Check Web Hosting: How to Find Who Hosts a Site

To check web hosting, look up the site’s DNS records, then look up the network that owns the public IP address. This can identify the network serving the site. If a CDN or reverse proxy sits in front, the public records may identify that service while the origin host remains unknown.

By Kurt

If it’s your own site, check your hosting dashboard, invoices, or developer handover first. Those can identify the company you pay even when public records show a different network.

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Look Up the Site’s Public Address

Use the domain alone, without https or a page path. Check both the bare domain and the www hostname. On a Mac or Linux system with dig installed, these example commands show the IPv4, IPv6, and alias records:

dig +short example.com A
dig +short example.com AAAA
dig +short www.example.com CNAME

Use an IP registration lookup for any address returned. The listed organization may be the infrastructure provider used by a reseller. A CNAME can also point to a hosted platform and provide a useful clue.

What the Results Actually Tell You

Record or lookup	What it identifies
A or AAAA	Public IPv4 or IPv6 address
CNAME	Another hostname the site points to
NS	Authoritative DNS provider
MX	Where incoming email is routed
Domain registration lookup	Registrar for the domain

What to Do if You See a CDN

Cloudflare can return its own IP addresses for proxied records. If that’s what you see, record it as the public endpoint and leave the origin host unknown unless the site owner or account records confirm it. For a migration, get the actual hosting account and backup access before changing DNS.

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