I managed a Pi-Hole in my house for about 4-years, and then I found NextDNS. I'm not a person who shies away from doing things the complicated way (because it's fun or makes life better), but paying only $19/yr to have everything managed automatically for me was a no-brainer. Not having to worry about my mobile devices using it, too, was icing on the cake.
NextDNS is essentially Pi-Hole as a Service, and I'm really happy with it since I just switched from my Pi-Hole days ago. One of Pi-Hole's biggest limitations is that it only worked on my local network, but NextDNS works anywhere you can specify your DNS settings.
Additionally, my Pi-Hole would frequently (at least once a month) require reboots and troubleshooting. That's the last thing I want to do (with family (im)patiently waiting) after working all day.
This is false. My NextDNS clients on macOS, iOS, and iPadOS devices all feature a Disable toggle that stops all blocking and allows un-blocked DNS resolution.
I don't use Windows at home, but I imagine there is a similar toggle.
Looks like there is a way to “pause” NextDNS. To have this ability, you have to set it up via their App and not the (recommended) configuration profile. Then you will gain a simple app with Enable/Disable toggle.
My NextDNS account is amazing, does anyone else use it with Pi-Hole?
I have my traffic going to Pi-Hole, which forwards it to a stubby instance, which encrypts it and forwards it to NextDNS. When I'm out then my phone just sends it straight to NextDNS
NextDNS is pretty good. My only gripe is that it's a chore to unsubscribe from emails because unsubscribe links often have trackers that NextDNS blocks, so I have to go into the NextDNS console and add a temporary exception.
In the Privacy settings tab, there's an option to enable/disable affiliate links: "Allow affiliate & tracking domains common on deals websites, in emails or in search results. Those usually only get called after manually clicking on a link."
I feel the same way. With my pi-hole I had an easy button to disable filtering for a few minutes so that I could determine if something broke because of that. NextDNS doesn't have that for some reason.
