If you want to avoid the rigamarole of self hosting, I recommend NextDNS. It's a paid DNS service with tons of customizability (i.e. Ad blocking) and visibility (i.e. logs)
NextDNS is always free for DNS. It also provides 300,000 queries free every month dor working with ad/tracker blocking configurations. Once this limit is exceeded, DNS continues to work but blocking doesn’t until the next month or until its paid for. The paid subscription is about USD 2 a month or USD 20 a year.