> I love having the control over things, but I don't pretend I don't spend a decent amount of time maintaining it.
I don't know the nature of your maintenance, but I've had unattended security updates working for years, I automated a bunch of stuff and use etc-keeper.
> I only run things that don't need to be highly available
Redundancy helps. 2 (more!) RPis cam be primary/secondary/tertiary DNS servers to match paranoia levels. Even if you have a single PiHole, keeping a pristine copy of the PiHole on a $3 sd card will get one up and running instantly.
> Suggesting that a particular home-hosted solution is "unbeatable" is meaningless
Oddly I found myself upvoting this comment AND the parent. Neither are wrong. There is no right or wrong on this subject.
$20 a year spent on a hand-rolled RPi that you have full control over and enjoy tinkering with—amazing value!
$20 a year for something like NextDNS so you can spend your time worrying about more important (to YOU) things, amazing value!
It's wondrous the choices we have today. 30 years ago it would have taken a rack full of noisy servers and a few thick books to keep a DNS service up and running at anything even close to 99%.
I don't know the nature of your maintenance, but I've had unattended security updates working for years, I automated a bunch of stuff and use etc-keeper.
> I only run things that don't need to be highly available
Redundancy helps. 2 (more!) RPis cam be primary/secondary/tertiary DNS servers to match paranoia levels. Even if you have a single PiHole, keeping a pristine copy of the PiHole on a $3 sd card will get one up and running instantly.
> Suggesting that a particular home-hosted solution is "unbeatable" is meaningless
What site am I on, Subscription-Services-News? (: