I changed NextDNS with Control D and I am not going again

Once you’ve determined to ditch your ISP’s DNS, the massive query is which DNS to select. There are loads of good choices beyond the obvious Google DNS, like Cloudflare, Quad9, NextDNS, OpenDNS, and AdGuard.

But when you’ve settled on a DNS supplier, particularly a paid one, switching isn’t one thing you do typically. I did, although. After using NextDNS for nearly a 12 months, I lastly ditched it for Control D as a result of the explanations have been simply too compelling.

NextDNS is nice, however Control D is quicker

What pushed me

I’ve at all times appreciated utilizing NextDNS and even advisable it to everybody for the longest time. It’s straightforward to setup, has a free tier, the dashboard is helpful, and there are many customization choices to make it work your manner.

Recently, although, certainly one of my colleagues at MUO benchmarked NextDNS against Control D and the outcomes have been in Control D’s favor. Even based mostly on DNSPerf testing, NextDNS has world common question speeds of 30.75ms whereas Control D is far sooner at 18.67ms. To be truthful, these pace variations are barely noticeable in real-world use, however you may’t merely ignore them both.

That’s what initially pushed me to strive Control D, and whereas the change was initially overwhelming, it was value it.

Control D provides me extra methods to customise DNS

More knobs to show

Let’s begin with my favourite Control D characteristic, which is site visitors redirection. Instead of merely blocking or permitting a website, it may well reroute the site visitors for particular companies via completely different locations. This clearly opens up a number of use circumstances.

For occasion, if a streaming service solely unlocks sure content material in a particular area, as an alternative of operating a full VPN, site visitors redirection can level that one app via a server in the suitable location whereas all the pieces else on the community continues on as regular. You also can route companies like Reddit or YouTube via areas the place they don’t present any adverts. These are simply a few examples, in fact, however you are able to do much more.

Traffic redirection additionally means you don’t want to make use of a VPN simply to unlock extra content material. A VPN tunnels all site visitors via a particular server, which implies slower speeds throughout the board and no option to deal with apps in a different way with out fixed toggling. Traffic redirection skips that trade-off totally.

Control D additionally has category-based filtering. You can block total classes of websites like crypto, authorities, grownup content material, courting websites, social media, and extra. What’s completely different is that Control D helps over 400 completely different companies whereas NextDNS solely helps 43. This is a giant deal for anybody who loves granular management.

Control D has options I want NextDNS had

The options that sealed it

Control D’s rule builder takes issues up a notch. It permits you to management how particular domains and companies ought to behave. While NextDNS additionally has allowlist, blocklist, and rewrites, I’ve discovered Control D’s arrange much more intuitive for creating customized guidelines. Heck, it even permits you to seek for guidelines and share them throughout profiles.

And talking of profiles, NextDNS permits you to tie a single profile to a particular gadget, which works, however Control D does it higher. It doesn’t lock profiles with gadgets, which implies you may strive completely different profiles on the identical gadget with out a lot effort. And the very best half is you can even schedule automated profile swaps based mostly on the time of the day.

Geo customized guidelines allow you to apply the identical filtering based mostly on location. A rule may redirect site visitors solely when connecting from a particular nation or apply completely different filtering relying on whether or not a tool is on the house community or touring overseas. That type of conditional logic is one thing that NextDNS lacks.

There’s only one catch with Control D

There’s nonetheless one space NextDNS wins, and that additionally explains its reputation to some extent. Its paid tier prices $1.99 a month, whereas Control D’s cheapest option costs $3 a month. And even then, you don’t get the site visitors redirection characteristic I talked about. That’s a part of Control D’s premium plan, which fits for $6 a month.

That’s a significant value hole over the complete 12 months, particularly for anybody who desires DNS filtering with controls and analytics. So sure, I like Control D higher, however I can’t advocate it for everybody, particularly to those that don’t want these high quality controls that Control D provides.

Pricing is one space the place NextDNS clearly pulls forward, and it additionally has a free trial that permits you to strive most of its options earlier than you really go for the paid tier. The free tier solely provides 300,000 queries monthly, which is sufficient to get an actual really feel for the service however not one thing that’ll final for greater than a day or two.