Knowing where a website is hosted reveals important information about its infrastructure, performance expectations, and the organization behind it. Hosting provider detection is useful for competitive analysis, sales prospecting (if you sell hosting or migration services), security research, and understanding the reliability of a site's stack.
Here are the most effective methods for identifying a website's hosting provider.
DNS Lookup and IP Analysis
The most direct method is resolving the domain's DNS records and checking which hosting provider owns the resulting IP address. You can use command-line tools like dig or nslookup to get the A record, then run a WHOIS lookup on the IP to find the hosting organization.
- A/AAAA records: Resolve to an IP address. Use WHOIS or IP geolocation databases to map the IP to a hosting provider like AWS, Google Cloud, Hetzner, or DigitalOcean.
- CNAME records: Often point to hosting-specific domains. For example, a CNAME to
*.herokuapp.comindicates Heroku, while*.netlify.apppoints to Netlify. - NS records: Nameservers themselves can indicate the hosting provider. Domains using
ns1.digitaloceanspaces.comare likely hosted on DigitalOcean.
HTTP Response Headers
Many hosting providers and CDNs inject their own HTTP headers into responses. Open your browser DevTools and check the response headers for clues:
Server: cloudflare— indicates Cloudflare (though the origin host may be elsewhere)X-Powered-By: WP Engine— reveals managed WordPress hostingX-Kinsta-Cache— indicates Kinsta hostingVia: 1.1 vegur— common on Heroku
Be aware that some providers strip identifying headers, and the presence of a CDN header (like Cloudflare) does not necessarily mean the site is hosted on that CDN — it may just be using it as a proxy.
SSL Certificate Analysis
The SSL/TLS certificate can also provide hosting clues. Certificates issued by Let's Encrypt are common across many hosts, but some providers use their own certificate authorities or specific certificate patterns. Managed platforms like Squarespace and Shopify issue certificates under their own domains, which confirms the hosting relationship.
Automated Hosting Detection
For quick and accurate results, WhatStack combines DNS analysis, IP resolution, HTTP header inspection, and certificate checking into a single scan. The dedicated /api/host endpoint returns hosting provider information directly, and the full /api/detect endpoint includes hosting data alongside all other detected technologies.
This is especially powerful when combined with CDN detection. WhatStack distinguishes between the CDN layer (Cloudflare, Fastly, Akamai) and the origin hosting provider (AWS, Vercel, WP Engine), giving you the full picture of a site's infrastructure. Try it now with the WhatStack scanner.