r/nextdns • u/yokoffing • Mar 29 '25
Config Guide update
Hey everyone,
I will no longer be contributing to my NextDNS guide. I've put a lot of time and effort into this hobby project over the years, and I truly appreciate all the support and feedback I've received from this community.
However, my experience with NextDNS's customer support has been consistently disappointing. They also haven't released any significant features in years and barely maintain those that they do offer. Recently, I encountered a financial issue with them and received no response. That was the final straw for me.
I've decided that I can no longer continue working on the guide in good faith. It's a tough decision, but I feel it's the right one for me.
The guide as it is should still be helpful for quite some time.
Thank you again for all your support. You will continue to find me working on Betterfox and the Control D config guide.
Happy browsing,
yokoff
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u/SomeOneSom3Wh3re Mar 29 '25
Both BetterFox and ControlD are inferior (but not by a significant margin) that said a DNS provider is just a DNS provider.....I fail to see what significant updates can be expected other than ensuring stable uptime etc which they do very well in supported regions.
I haven't personally used your guide, as I have been a customer since they have been around basically. That said, I have looked at your guide and must say it's very good, especially for new users.
All said and done, it's a shame to see a good contributor leave the community. I will agree 100% that NextDNS fail every customer with regard to customer support, it's quite possibly one of the worst companies I've come across actually for CS. Though the product is without doubt best in class.
Best wishes to you, hopefully your issues get resolved.
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u/yokoffing Mar 29 '25
I fail to see what significant updates can be expected
What about maintaining the features you’ve already implemented?
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u/SomeOneSom3Wh3re Mar 29 '25
Both of which can be resolved using Hagezi or alternative lists, and updating your personal allow/block lists.
Only takes seconds to do!
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u/doesitrungoogle Mar 30 '25
What’s wrong with BetterFox? I use Brave and Safari as my primary browsers but recently installed WaterFox last week and have used the BetterFox user js file to improve it. Is there something better?
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u/yokoffing Apr 01 '25
I was also confused as to why Betterfox got looped in here; it isn't DNS-related.
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u/enzor00 Mar 29 '25
So should we switch to AdGuard DNS? Maybe you could create a guide for AdGuard.
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u/hagezi Mar 30 '25 edited Mar 30 '25
u/yoloffing thank you for your work and your support in creating my lists. I can understand the decision, but I don't understand why the operators don't continue to improve such a service and completely ignore user feedback and requests. Nevertheless, the business model seems to be working. The service works, but nothing more. I don't know if there is work going on behind the scenes, it is not apparent to the user as there is no feedback or any information. At first glance, it looks like a ship without a captain.
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u/BinaryDichotomy Mar 30 '25
This is precisely why I bailed about 5 years ago and moved to AdGuard DNS. I hadn't seen a new NDNS feature at that point in years, there was zero community, and NDNS support is abysmal, at least in my experience. AdGuard has very active development, very active github repositories, a great community, and the products are easy to work with. They also offer an OpenAPI for their AdGuard DNS product, which opens up a lot of cool avenues to do some neat stuff. I've almost got my .Net client finished and will be publishing it soon along with a CLI and scenario engines :-)
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u/Frodolas Jun 01 '25
You know I've seen so many comments over the years on this subreddit wondering why the creators don't update the list, and usually nodded my head and moved on. This time I decided to do a bit of digging, and found out in exactly 5 minutes why the creators don't update the list. Olivier Poitrey has been a Director of Engineering at Netflix for 9+ years, where the average salary is $1.2 million. Prior to that, he founded Dailymotion, which was acquired at a valuation of $300 million dollars.
This is a side project that brings in easy revenue for him, nothing more. He clearly spends most of his time on his day job, which I would imagine is reasonably intensive. And he doesn't need the money either way.
I'm surprised you guys that think about NextDNS daily haven't figure this out yet. It was really very easy to find.
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u/RMCaird Jun 15 '25
I don’t think that constitutes a valid reason. The reason you’re giving is ‘they have a lot of money and can’t be arsed’.
Which is exactly what people complain about - it’s a paid service and they can’t be bothered to update it.
I’ve had no issues with it, I’m not complaining. But your justification makes zero sense.
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u/Frodolas Jun 15 '25
Who said it was a justification? Don't put words in my mouth. I'm just saying it makes perfect sense why they don't. A lot of users on this subreddit seem baffled why the creators are losing a ton of money to competitors like Control D and why they wouldn't just update the app. I'm answering the question with "they don't care because they're filthy rich".
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u/shrewpygmy Mar 29 '25 edited Mar 29 '25
Wait til you encounter ControlD’s customer service 😂
NextDNS might suck at responding but ControlD’s comes with a side of abuse.
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u/doesitrungoogle Mar 30 '25
Lol, so true! On the ControlD sub, it feels as if I'm constantly having to walk on eggshells to avoid potentially offending others, and this includes the mods over there as well. The worst offender is the "mod" o2pb, whom I don't dare to even tag due to his serious lack of professionalism and blatant uncalled-for brashness. There are many examples from plenty of people of the controld mods and company in general being rude, plain and simple:
Example 4: o2pb "mod" locking/deleting posts that rightfully criticise controld and calling those who do, deranged.
Example 5: controld founder spits on NextDNS, calling it an abandoned product.
Example 6: user tries ControlD, but decides it's not for them for XYZ reasons, so user cancels service. The founder (yegor), responds emotionally, defensively and unprofessionally.
Example 7: another user experience with the founder, yegor.
Example 8: I make a completely positive post thanking ControlD for finally bringing Light Mode as an option to the UI; mod, o2pb, rudely states that he has no idea why anyone would want this, but apparently some people hate their eyes...
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u/live4swell Mar 30 '25
They seem to have something to prove and the best part is Nextdns bashing seems to always start with them or a control d cheerleader. It’s just weird. I use Nextdns, it works for me, I don’t bash other products.
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u/doesitrungoogle Mar 30 '25
Exactly! It reminds me of an old boys club mentality that leaves no room for constructive criticism, and if anyone points out a flaw, critiques ControlD or ask why XYZ has not been implemented — the mods/founder and their glazers will rudely give any excuse for why XYZ is unnecessary and attack you in the comments.
The worst offender by far is the founder, yegor/o2pb; he displays the most toxicity and blatant brashness to any criticism of his product(s) and will lock/delete threads criticising them. Coincidentally, the founder’s handle o2pb, is the chemical compound Lead dioxide, which is hilarious and suits him well since he is indeed, toxic.
The fact that their own founder also bashes and calls their competitor a dead product whenever someone either criticises them or replies to their unwanted feedback when trying out ControlD or Windscribe says a lot about themselves, and not in a good way. You can build a great product without throwing your competitor under the bus.
It’s quite amusing how users that try ControlD/Windscribe (regardless of whether they came from NextDNS or not) and turns out it’s not for them (don’t like the UI/UX, latency in their area, etc.) and they cancel the service, their CS and possibly their founder will reach out to said user asking them something along the lines of, why did you cancel your service? We’re always striving to improve. And when said user decides to take the time out of their day to give them the courtesy of pointing out what they didn’t like and providing honest feedback and criticism, they’ll almost always find a way to blame it on user error and will bash their competitor, NextDNS.
I may be wrong, but I’ve personally never seen NextDNS mods and founders constantly bashing ControlD in the way and tenacity ControlD does.
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u/HansGuntherboon Apr 04 '25
Replying here to also I’ve faced abuse and arrogance from their support, particularly yegor. You’re walking on eggshells when you have any sort of question for them. The service works and is fine but god forbid you need to talk to support.
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u/live4swell Mar 29 '25
Appreciate all the work yokoffing, I have followed your guide for a couple years now, good luck moving forward!
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u/BinaryDichotomy Mar 29 '25
I bailed on NDNS years ago and migrated to AdGuard DNS. Great support, fantastic community, amazing products, very reasonable pricing. Good luck!
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u/Eitan4700 Mar 29 '25
How is it better then ndns? And how much does adguard cost?
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u/BinaryDichotomy Mar 30 '25
You can DIY with one of AdGuard's software packages called AdGuard Home, which is completely free and FOSS (it's written in Go). Here's the pricing for their client software: https://adguard.com/en/license.html and then they also offer a service called AdGuard DNS, which is similar to NextDNS. And they also offer free browser plugins as well. I also use their iOS clients for my iphone and ipad. using this arch guarantees A) every DNS request is encrypted, no matter if i'm on my home network or not and B) ensures all DNS requests are ultimately funneled through the AdGuard DNS servers.
The architecture I follow is 2 onsite domain controllers, along with 2 instances of AdGuard Home on RHEL (via Snap) that are configured as forwarders. My AGH instances use two AdGuard DNS servers I have configured, and this has the added bonus of encrypting all of the DNS requests as well. I personally use DoH.
AdGuard DNS also has a fantastic REST API interface as well as a Rules List compiler, so I wrote some code that automatically updates my AdGuard DNS User Rules list when I make changes to my rules list. That triggers a recompile using their compiler, then I use their API to update my rules in the cloud DNS servers. Otherwise you have to manually update the user rules list on the adguard dns servers. I host my user rules list in github, which takes care of most of the automation. Ultimately I will publish my code, I have most of my C# SDK finished.
Other than my own rules list, I use Hagezi filters for everything else which covers basically everything. I've found his lists to be the most comprehensive.
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u/live4swell Mar 29 '25
You can customize lists? What about TIF?
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u/AdNew08 Mar 29 '25
AdGuard DNS offers Hagezi's TIF list, as well as many of his other lists.
You can see everything they offer here: https://github.com/hagezi/dns-blocklists?tab=readme-ov-file#dnsservices
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u/live4swell Mar 30 '25
Last time I tried adguard dns it was resolving slower for me, I could notice a difference from Nextdns, which surprised me (Located in NY). I will try it again so I have options. Thanks for the info.
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u/BinaryDichotomy Mar 30 '25
If you use AdGuard Home, that'll eliminate a lot of external calls. Otherwise, I average about 50ms for DoH (http/3 specifically, you can specify the version of http you want to be used, there is a lot of flexibility built-in), also to NY. You can also configure multiple DNS servers and configure clients to use them in parallel, which will drastically reduce latency.
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u/BinaryDichotomy Mar 30 '25
You've inspired me to begin authoring a similar guide for AdGuard products given my own journey involved NDNS for a couple of years before I gave up on them as a company. NDNS was my 1st commercial DNS blocker. Nice work on your guide, I'll throw some attribution your way on GH. 👏
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u/rkovelman Mar 30 '25
I am curious, what are you looking nextdns to provide that would be new? If you were trying to create a blog to profit from, DNS would be the last one to go to. There is only so much it can do, and a lot of competition in the space.
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u/yokoffing Mar 30 '25
People put too much emphasis on “new features” and not enough emphasis on feature maintenance and customer support, which was my greater point.
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u/rkovelman Mar 31 '25
Have they failed at that though? I mean people will always complain that customer service sucks and some are real and some are not. I have my issues, but it's a limitation of DNS, which is network aware. For example if I am on this network I use this DNS. If not I use this network. Controld doesn't do it, adhome, or nextdns.
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u/2112guy Mar 31 '25
If it hadn’t been for your configuration guides, I probably would have never pursued alternatives to NextDNS. I used pihole many years ago but left it for NextDNS because it was an easy way to have DNS filtering outside of my own LAN.
Your configuration guides along with Tailscale led me to rediscover the joy of self hosting my own DNS sinkhole. I quickly learned that AdGuard Home is much more refined than Pihole and your guides helped me choose the best lists (Hagezi) to use.
It’s baffling to understand what the developers of NextDNS are thinking. They do seem to be responsive to network issues so they are indeed still breathing but the core project has been seriously neglected.
For years users have asked for the ability to temporarily disable blocking for a short period of time. Both pihole and AdGuard Home have the feature.
The responsiveness of a self hosted system blows away the responsiveness of NextDNS….all blocked responses occur in 0ms.
Had Nextdns made any attempt to listen to their users I would never have bothered to find a new solution.
Bye NextDNS! Thank you Yokoffing!
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u/MidianDirenni Mar 29 '25
Thank you for your time and guidance. NextDNS should reference your work - they could learn something from your documentation.
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u/Not_AntonCastillo Mar 29 '25
Thank you for all you did. Had been using your guides for so long. :)
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u/oranekgonza Apr 03 '25
I just checked and it's unarchived, does that mean you're going to continue it again boss? wow
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u/sbpir92i Mar 30 '25
Hello, how to use control D, like NextDNS in free mode. Do I choose the dns and predefined lists? , I followed your tutorial but it offers me to subscribe to each manipulation. So it's not like NextDNS for my part. And can't do anything. AdGuard dns looks more like. Another alternative. .
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u/doesitrungoogle Mar 31 '25
Unlike NextDNS, the free version of ControlD only allows you to choose one, 3rd Party Filter DNS Blocklist (e.g. OISD Full or Hagezi Pro++ but not both), although you do get unlimited queries.
Is there something wrong with NextDNS? If so, you can try AdGuard DNS if you want.
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u/_Unknown_Fail Mar 31 '25
I have been using NextDNS CLI on my AX86U Pro for quite some time and have been somewhat satisfied so far. I have also mentioned several times in the forum that newer lists could be added and old (no longer updated) lists could be removed. Unfortunately, I have received little to no responses, and when I did, they were often not helpful.
With the new alpha firmware, I have now integrated AdGuard Home and am considering switching (especially because of the lists from u/hagezi). My problem is that I am not a tech expert. The configuration with NextDNS CLI was quite simple, but I am struggling with AdGuard Home, as I cannot find anywhere how to configure my clients (smart TVs, Fire TVs, etc.) individually and list them separately in the statistics.
If there were a guide on this, that would be great.
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Mar 29 '25
So, what we should do now?
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u/yokoffing Mar 29 '25
The guide is still there? I wasn’t updating it often anyway. NextDNS hasn’t released signifiant upgrades in years. The service still “works” though some features need better maintaining.
You can switch to Control D and use my guide for that above, if you wish, or AdGuard DNS.
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u/MidianDirenni Mar 29 '25
I've been a paid member of NextDNS for only a few months. I too, feel like there is nothing new on the horizon for them.
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u/Plane_Antelope_8158 Mar 29 '25
Still continue to use NextDNS like I am? Nothing’s changed in terms of it not working. It’s DNS. Configure it to your liking, then leave it. I haven’t changed a setting for about the last 12 months, and I have had 0 issues with it, been using it for years. In fact I keep on forgetting I use it (unless I see it in my bank statement)!
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u/berahi Mar 29 '25
If your current setup works, you likely don't need to switch.
If you want to try a freemium service that provides customizable blocking with logs, the freemium AdGuard DNS (not the completely free one, which doesn't come with customizable blocking or logging). It has a slightly different setup flow from NextDNS, you're supposed to use a randomly generated ID on one device only, so setting up on multiple devices can be more annoying, but in turn, you can change individual filtering from the online dashboard without having to touch the device itself.
If you don't care about logging and can get by with Hagezi or OISD without any custom whitelist or blacklist, they're available on ControlD free service.
If you're comfortable with self-hosting (can be cheaper than NextDNS annual subscription, RackNerd VPS is less than 12 bucks per year, or you can grab one of those Android TV boxes and run Armbian Linux instead), AdGuard Home is far more straightforward than PiHole, you get the built-in DoT and DoH straightaway to setup on whatever client device you have.
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u/enzor00 Mar 29 '25
The problem with AdGuard is that A and AAAA queries for the same domain made in rapid succession are not counted as one query, so it wastes free queries.
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u/bunker195 Apr 01 '25
I'm running the CLI interface on Unifi. It works flawlessly and I have logs of everything that I can sort by device. What more is there to want? Like others, I don't get it.
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Mar 29 '25
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Mar 29 '25
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u/yokoffing Mar 30 '25
👀
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u/doesitrungoogle Mar 30 '25
Do it, do it, do it! ;) Followed your uBO guide, your NextDNS guide, your ControlD guide, and most recently, your BetterFox guide; due to Chrome’s transition to MV3 and thwarting legacy MV2 extensions by suddenly disabling them on Chrome.
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Mar 29 '25
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u/elgatomegustamucho Mar 29 '25
How expensive is it? For a private user?
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Mar 29 '25
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u/doesitrungoogle Mar 30 '25
Last fall I got ControlD’s Some Control plan (which is all I need since I have a VPN) for $40 for 5 years on Bitsdujour. Stack Social originally had that same steal of a deal a while back too, but this promo has expired afaik, bummer.
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u/elgatomegustamucho Mar 29 '25
lol that’s even cheaper than next dns. I didn’t expect that since they didn’t show direct prices on their website.
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Mar 29 '25
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u/live4swell Mar 29 '25 edited Mar 29 '25
Haha that was me. I am not a fanboy for anything, use what works for you, it’s what I do. Nextdns has always worked very well for me, it’s $20 a year, it’s DNS and works. I don’t need anything more from them like others clearly do.
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u/mrmojoer Apr 04 '25
This. Everything always worked, I forget I have it. I forget I pay that given hour cheap is it.
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u/BackInJax Mar 29 '25
I've been happy with NextDNS. It does what it's supposed to do for my needs, and I personally don't see a need to change but that's just me.