Hopefully this is not too long! There has been a lot of changes since the last time I posted a full overview like this
At least from my experience, with a proper blacklist it shuts down a ton more stuff. Not just pure ads, but a ton of tracking and websites/apps phoning home too. You can configure it to be as strict or lenient as you’d like, basically. For me it’s nice, because I can just apply it to the entire network, and I don’t have to worry about trying to explain how this works to my family
Maybe I’ll give it a go again, after all it does have a really nice slick WebUI
Also has the benefit of being a completely local DNS server for all your devices to use. I think you are also able to add custom entries if you wanted to be able to refer to your devices using dns. It also has some caching benefits so there are less DNS requests going out of your home network.
Personally I set up AdGuard Home because it has DNS over HTTPS support out of the box, which means your ISP cannot see your DNS requests. Pihole supports this too, but it requires additional setup.
Check out the Star Trek theme for PiHole! It’s one of the default options.