Plesk website preview does not work: This site can't be reached. Server IP address could not be found. DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN

Renan Poss Moreira

Updated January 13, 2026 19:01

Plesk for Windows Plesk for Linux kb: technical

Applicable to:

Plesk for Linux
Plesk for Windows

Symptoms

Website preview does not work with Quick Preview on an external domain name option selected under Tools & Settings>Website Preview. The following errors are displayed by the browser:

PLESK_ERROR: This site can't be reached
<URL>'s server IP address could not be found.
Try running Windows Network Diagnostics.
DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN

Cause

DNS service for the domain in question is not being managed in Plesk or the corresponding A record is missing. In order for Site Preview to work out of the box, a domain must have its DNS served by Plesk or have corresponding A record.

Resolution

Apply one of the following solutions:

Use Plesk as the DNS server

How to use DNS with a Plesk server.

Set DNS records manually

In Plesk, go to Tools & Settings > Website Preview select the option Quick Preview on an external domain name and specify the name of the domain to be used for site preview.
In the DNS server, configure an “A” DNS record for that domain. The record should look like this:

CONFIG_TEXT: *.<Plesk_IP>.<domain_name>.

where <domain_name> is the name of the domain, and <Plesk_IP> is the IP address of the Plesk server with dots(.) for IPv4 or colons (:) for IPv6 are replaced with dashes (-). For example, Plesk IP address is 192.168.10.20, and the name of the domain is example.com, the “A” record will look like this:

CONFIG_TEXT: *.192-168-10-20.example.com.

If there is more than one IP address registered in Plesk, add a corresponding record for each of them.