The main annoying thing about piHole with a non-technical family has been that it blocks google shopping.

You know, when you search for a thing you want to buy and google shopping shows a list of common stores on top of the search results like a bunch of little cards? Yep. Clicking one there causes a failure because that link is a google ad link. Same thing if you tab into "Shopping". All links are broken.

Otherwise, it's been 4 years and no other complaints at all.

IME the tradeoffs (reduction of ads + malware) are well worth the very occasional exception that needs to be made.

  >  Do all websites (and other services) still work perfectly

Like 99%? I've rarely seen problems running it for years

  > but without ads,

No. It is only a DNS blocker. Most browsers these days will bypass that anyways. But it is definitely helpful for lots of other things on your network. You can also point the browser there to get the same benefits but still won't replace an adblocker.

GP here and yes I've experienced that too— I run a pihole-style blocklist on my OpenWRT router and never got a good workflow together for adding exemptions to it.

On a phone it's not a huge deal as you can just momentarily switch to data, click through, and then switch back. But it's more annoying on a computer where you have to figure out where that link was going to go and then get there by an organic path.

Overall absolutely worth the slight pain though.