How to find where a website is hosted

Acquiring a web host is a thing every website owner must do before launching the website. Because it is literally a place where the site is hosted to be accessible from the Internet. Therefore, both novices and seasoned webmasters struggle to choose a webhost that will be suitable for their needs.

But to find out the reliability of the hosting provider you need not only to check various conditions those services have to offer and the opinion of the actual users about it, but also the actual stability of its services. And that’s when you should get the best tools available to check everything thoroughly, like our HostTracker toolkit.

How to find host for website

In practice, choosing a web host for your site and its needs in preparation for launching it on the web or its migration, you should do some thorough research and try comparing some of the host platforms you think are satisfying and acceptable. For example, start from thoroughly checking the subscription plans online before picking which web hosting to choose. This way you will be able to determine what host is the most satisfying for you.

Then, if you really don’t understand how to choose a web host at glance, you should obviously start with reading through the reviews on various platforms. This is a valid way, but only if you surely know that the review platform is not filled with bots or paid reviews. Of course, you can try asking your acquaintances if they know some hosting platforms reliable enough to use. Though their opinions could be biased to favorites instead of ones you require.

How to choose a web hosting provider wrongly

Wrong choice of the web hosting is a common mistake that a lot of webmasters actually tend to make over and over again despite migrating between providers. That usually happens because the webmaster overlooks vital points of the process of choosing it. Strictly speaking, to choose good web host you need to thoroughly check what you really want from the provider and what your website really needs.

For example, most novice webmasters can’t get rid of the bad habit of thinking that you need to aim for the most expensive service plan if you want stability. That forces them to choose a host despite it being unreliable or even outright bad in terms of stability no matter the price.

On the other hand, some webmasters keep listening to various pieces of advice from acquaintances. Despite the fact that their proficiency and skills are doubtful. That usually leads to the same results as the above example. Advised hosting could be really unfit to your purposes or really bad overall.

How to find where website is hosted and test the provider

The most technical approach to find the website host that will suit your needs in the best way is to do a research on your own and compare all parameters manually. And, of course, if you want to understand how to choose a website host, you need to check and test everything with the best service available, like our HostTracker platform. Because you will need to check everything thoroughly, and with using more than one location to run every checker, or you will not understand how well the host works from different regions of the world. And in our short guide we will show you how to do it.

Discover TOP competitor

First step in your search for the best host service is finding the topmost rival in your site niche. In your case, you should use the most popular keyword in your target niche as the basis for your search for the top websites in SERP (Search Engine Results Page) queues. And in our example, to show how this thing basically works, we will use the ‘host tracker’ keyword.

Also it is vital to keep the target location in mind. Because you need to use a valid keyword for the target location from where you will be getting your website’s traffic. For not to use the wrong keyword for your audience, you should search for topmost competitors using a proper VPN service, browser configuration or search engine settings.

Find host of a website via Traceroute tool

When you try to find web host of website that belongs to the top competitor or competitors in the niche, you should check its domain. It is relatively simple - use HostTracker toolkit to run traceroute online checker. This tool will show you the competitor’s IP (you will need it in future searches), network route to the site’s server and make it possible to check the hosting of a website along with it. To do this simple task, you should:

• If you are already a registered user, then Sign In, and if not, then register and then Sign In to our HostTracker website.
• Open ‘Instant Checks’ on the dashboard panel using the button at the right side of the web page.
• Press the ‘Trace’ button to open the ‘Traceroute’ tab.
• Type or copy-paste the competitor’s website address (domain name) in the corresponding text field. In our example, we use ‘https://www.host-tracker.com/’ as the url for checking.
• Pick the location or leave the ‘Location’ dropdown menu as it is to use random locations.
• Press the green ‘Check’ button to find hosting of a website with traceroute tool in the ‘Details’ section of each check.

When you are checking the domain, you must pay a lot of attention to each result and check ‘Time’ and ‘Status’ of all records for a variety of locations. ‘Status’ must be green and ‘Good’ to determine that the server is working fine and the website is accessible - this info will give you a general impression on the competitor's provider. ‘Time’ must be green and as short as possible for every location.

Find website host via Ping tool

Now that you know the competitor’s website domain name and IP (it’s shown in ‘Status’ column in Trace tool results), you should check it with the ping test tool to check hosting provider response speed and accessibility. Every website has its own target audience, mainly specified by niche and location. And you should be targeting your customers depending on the region you'll be working with.

Therefore, you should determine the accessibility of your competitor by defining a location, because the host plays a huge role in it. That means that you should pick a 'Ping' tool target location that is valid for your targeted audience. And, returning back on track, the ‘Ping’ usage is almost the same as with traceroute tool:

• Open the ‘Ping’ tab by using the corresponding button at the top of the page.
• Use the IP address of the competitor’s website that was shown in the ‘Status’ column of the ‘Traceroute’ check result. We will use one of HostTracker IP addresses, and you, in turn, should use your competitor’s IP.
• Pick the location manually or use random locations.
• Press the ‘Check’ button to execute the hosting provider check via IP.

This test, in a nutshell, determines how fast users can access the website from the target region. And they should be able to do it as fast as possible. There are two parameters that you must pay attention to. Because they are basically showing how good the competitor’s hosting works at the moment. 

‘Status’ column will show you the current status of the web server and hosting. This column basically shows how good your competitor's host works. And if you see some issues despite the fact that the website is on top, that means hosting has troubles, but there are other factors that are making Google range the website better. And you can consider this as sa part of your strategy in case you encounter the same problems in the future.

In the perfect scenario, ‘Status’ must be ‘Good’ and green to show that everything is working fine. ‘Replies’ column, in turn, will show you the response time from each of four standard ping attempts in milliseconds. The lower the time - the better. Because it is essentially showing the reaction time of the server and the reliability of the host when accessing it from various locations.

Find out where website is hosted

If both traceroute and ping are showing good or otherwise satisfying results, then the last thing you need to do is to find the actual hosting provider that your competitor is using. To do that, you need to use the whois lookup tool at our HostTracker platform. Again, using this tool is relatively simple and you will be able to find out host of website via almost similar way to the one you already used traceroute and ping:

• Pick the ‘Whois’ tab to start website hosting check preparations.
• Type domain name in the corresponding field. In our case, it will be https://www.host-tracker.com/ domain name.
• Press ‘Check’ to execute find site host and get hosting information with our tool.

When you receive the response to the WHOIS request, you will basically get all of the available information about the domain name. And when you look at the report, you will be able to see who hosts a website in the ‘Name Server’ line by using the corresponding tool from our toolkit.

HostTracker in particular is using a OneProvider hosting that is highly accessible and stable from all over the world, no matter the geographical location of the user. You surely were able to see that in reports from traceroute and ping tools.

As a result of our example tests, we found that our provider shows satisfactory and stable results. Our https://oneprovider.com/ host servers have ‘Traceroute’ response time results that are usually the same on multiple attempts and always in the safe zone. Global ‘Ping’ scans also showed that locations with the best networks have less than 10 milliseconds of delay, and locations with the worst connectivity have less than 140 ms.

In your own tests, you should compare multiple competitors and pick the best hosts among ones they are using. Of course, you should consider only results that are valid for your target location, your website’s current state and size and your plans for future development.

How to choose hosting in a techie way

As you can see, a technical approach is one of the best ways how to choose a web hosting with the best parameters. Because using this way with the help of our HostTracker toolkit will help you avoid a lot of connectivity, accessibility and stability issues that could show up out of nowhere later on if you choose web hosting provider poorly.

So the first thing to do before choosing the best among the hosts is to check and see who is hosting a website with traceroute, ping and WHOIS tools on the websites of the topmost competitors in your niche. The first one will check and test networking issues, the second one will show you the competitor’s website IP, and the last one will allow you to find actual hosting services where your competitors are hosted.

And if you checked all the details and they were satisfying for your needs, you can pick one of the hosting providers for yourself. Of course, it should be the most stable one. Otherwise it could badly affect your SERP position in the future. We will give some extra tips on this matter down below.

Find out where site is hosted and what plan competitor is probably using

If you know all technical information about your competitors' sites in the niche you plan to conquer yourself, you can pretty much check everything before you choose web hosting for yourself. From finding out the location of the server before choosing a domain host and determining what kind of website it is, and up to the existence of other domains that are using the same IP and the type of the host subscription (shared hosting or not). To do the latter you should simply use one of the convenient tools from all around the Internet. There are a lot of such services, and all of them can be of help to you with those matters.

Choose a web hosting plan

With the tech knowledge about your competitors’ sites, it is easy to find a lot of details before hosting site choosing. And among those details you can even determine service plans used by competitors. For example, if IP is used by several domains, then the competitor is probably using a shared hosting subscription. And if not, then the competitor is using a dedicated or virtual hosting plan. With this knowledge, it is relatively easy to plan your budget. Because you will understand how much you will need from the host if you want to launch a site in the niche. But don’t forget about taking the size of the competitor's website into account and adjusting your own in comparison.

Website host information

Knowledge about your competitors’ websites is irreplaceable from the beginning of the creation of the website for your own company. If you can check where a site is hosted, you can find its hosting provider to test it thoroughly and it will give you solutions for a variety of situations.

For starters, this will be very useful in choosing a web hosting provider for your web site. Because this is a literal testing of the stability of host providers that are already in use by your competitors in the niche in the Internet. And this web hosting information will be useful in the future - it will allow you to prevent a lot of issues that usually arise after finding an unreliable host.

Of course, it will be much safer to use whois, traceroute, ping and other tools at HostTracker to monitor the situation after you picked a hosting. You will need to register at the platform and set up proper monitoring.

FAQ

How to choose web hosting?

To pick an appropriate and suitable hosting for your site, you obviously should use the tech way. You literally should test hosts that are used by rival companies in the same niche as yours. With this approach you can relatively easily determine stability, reliability and accessibility of their hosts and even understand the amount of resources that your site could need

How to find the host of a website?

To find the hosting service that is used by a particular website, the first thing you need is to find its IP with traceroute or ping tool. You can find those tools at our HostTracker platform. And then, using the IP address you already found, you should check WHOIS information on it by using the corresponding tool from our toolkit.