How to Find Out Who Hosts and Manages Your Website

You can find out who hosts and manages your website in a few minutes using free public lookups, no passwords needed. The catch most people trip on is that "who manages my website" isn't one answer. Hosting, your domain name, and your DNS are often three different accounts at three different companies. This walks you through finding each one, calmly, in order.

Owners usually come to this question at a stressful moment: a bill arrived from a company they don't recognize, or they need to make a change and can't remember who set anything up. Good news is that the answers are public. Here's how to pull them.

First, understand the three pieces

Before you look anything up, it helps to know what you're looking for. A working website leans on three separate services, and any of them can be held by a different company.

In plenty of small-business setups all three sit at one company, like GoDaddy. But just as often a developer registered the domain at one place, hosts the site somewhere else, and runs DNS through Cloudflare. You need to know which, so let's find out.

What you'll need

• Your website address. Nothing else is required to start.
• A browser on any device.
• About five minutes to check all three pieces.

How to find your host, registrar, and DNS

1. 1Run a free built-with scan first. It's the fastest single view. Paste your address into Built With and it returns the hosting company, server IP, nameservers, DNS provider, and registrar together. For many people, this one step answers the whole question.
2. 2Confirm your registrar with a WHOIS or RDAP lookup. Search "WHOIS lookup" and enter your domain. The result names the registrar (the company you renew the domain through) and shows the registration and expiry dates. This is the record that proves where your domain actually lives.
3. 3Read the nameservers. Both the built-with scan and WHOIS show your nameservers. They look like ns1.somecompany.com. Whichever company's name is in there is the one currently steering your domain, and it's often your DNS provider or your host.
4. 4Trace the host from the server IP. If you want to double-check hosting specifically, the built-with scan lists the server IP and the hosting company that owns it. That's who physically stores your website's files.
5. 5Write down all three, plus the login email if you know it. Even if you can't log in yet, having the company names on paper is what a new developer, or we, would need to help you take control.

What to do when it all points to your developer

Sometimes the lookups come back with a host and registrar you've never dealt with, and the registrant contact is your web developer, not you. That's common, and it's not always sinister. Some developers set everything up under their own account to make their life easier. But it does mean you don't fully control your own website yet.

If that's the situation, the fix is to get those accounts transferred into your name. Ask your developer, in writing, to either move the domain and hosting to accounts you own or to add you as an owner. If they've gone quiet, our guide on what to do when your web developer disappears covers how to recover access step by step.

If you'd rather not keep track of any of this

Once you know who hosts and manages your site, the sensible next move is to make sure someone reliable is actually watching it. Our maintenance plans start at $99 a month and include keeping your hosting, domain, and DNS in order, so renewals don't lapse and you always have a person to call who knows your setup.

We're based near Seattle and have handled hosting, domains, and DNS for small businesses since 2011, both around the Puget Sound and remotely across the country. Getting an honest picture of your current setup is a good first step, and we're happy to walk through it with you.