Find your new server’s IP address

Where to find it

• Shared or managed hosting: the welcome email from your new host, or the account overview of its control panel. It is often labelled “server IP”, “shared IP” or “dedicated IP”.
• VPS and cloud servers: the instance or droplet page in your provider’s console lists a public IPv4 address. Use the public one, not the private or internal one.
• Behind a load balancer: use the address of the load balancer that will receive the traffic after the switch.
• Still unsure: ask your new host’s support which IP your domain’s A record should point to.

Check that the server answers for your domain

A server can host many sites on one IP. To confirm it serves yours, ask it directly with curl. --resolve skips DNS for this one request:

# Ask the new server (203.0.113.10) for example.com over HTTPS, ignoring DNS
curl -skI --resolve example.com:443:203.0.113.10 https://example.com/

# Same over plain HTTP
curl -sI --resolve example.com:80:203.0.113.10 http://example.com/

A 200 or a redirect to your own domain is a good sign. A default “welcome” page or a 404 usually means the site is not configured on that server yet. Opening a DNSPeek preview shows you the same thing, in a browser.

DNSPeek checks the IP for you

When you create a preview link, DNSPeek opens the link at once and checks the server in the background. A few seconds later the link shows the result, for example:

• “Server responds, certificate valid for example.com”: all good.
• “The server at 203.0.113.10 has no certificate for example.com — is the IP right?”: the server does not know your site. Usually the IP belongs to another server, or the site is not set up there yet.
• “This IP is where the site is live now”: you entered the current server’s address, so the preview shows the live site.
• “This is a Cloudflare IP, not your server’s IP”: see the CDN warning below.

Use Change IP on the link to correct the address; the check runs again. Guests can change the IP of their preview link from the same card.

If a visitor opens a preview whose server cannot be reached, DNSPeek shows a page explaining what failed (for example “We couldn't open a secure connection”) with a link to fix the preview, instead of a bare error code.

Don’t confuse it with the current IP

Looking up your domain today returns the old server (or your CDN), not the new one:

# Where does public DNS point today?
dig +short example.com A
nslookup example.com

Addresses DNSPeek cannot use

For security, previews can only reach servers on the public internet. These are rejected:

• Private network ranges such as 10.x.x.x, 172.16.x.x–172.31.x.x and 192.168.x.x
• Loopback and local addresses such as 127.0.0.1

The dashboard accepts IPv4 addresses. To preview a server that is only reachable inside your network, it needs a public address first. See also Limitations.