Most webmaster tools struggle to answer one simple question: who really hosts a website?

Who Is Hosting This uses multiple data sources to provide more accurate results. Sure, many tools will claim to tell you - only to get it completely wrong.

Let's take an example. Search for HostGator.com on DomainTools, Netcraft or countless other tools, and you'll be told that the site is hosted by The Planet.

Now, HostGator are a webhost - so obviously they are not hosted at The Planet (but they do rent space in The Planet's datacenter, hence the confusion).

Now try the same search on Who Is Hosting This, and you'll get the real result: Hostgator host Hostgator.com!

Knowing the real web host is invaluable for all sorts of situations. Some common ones include:

1. Learning who your competitors host with
2. Issuesing a DMCA complaint
3. Filing legal papers
4. Reporting a DDoS attack

No. We are not aware of any way to provide 100% accurate results. However, we use several data sources to find out who is hosting a website, which generally makes us more accurate than other tools. If you find a bad result, you can help us by reporting it for investigation.

This may be because:

1. Try hitting the 'refresh data' link. If this site has moved hosts recently, our results may show the old host. This is due to our cacheing of results.

2. This web host is a reseller of a bigger hosting company, or they rent rackspace from the other host. Our results may sometimes show the IP range owner, and not the reseller. We endeavor to identify both companies, where possible.

The company responsible has their own IP range. Some common examples are Amazon and eBay. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide detailed information about their hosting setups.

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The site launched in summer 2007 by two web developers in Zagreb, Gordan Orlic and Stan Sredl.

In August 2008, the site was bought by London-based Quality Nonsense Ltd. We plan to continue Stan and Gordan's good work and always value your feedback, comments and ideas for how we can improve the site.

Advertising relationships do not influence our hosting reviews, user reviews or any other editorial. Read more about what makes our webhosting reviews different.