[Sn1F3rt]

I have a few Freenom free domains and during the last week when I had to move five Websites and change DNS, Freenom DNS propagated faster than Namecheap.  Namecheap offers more in that one can create one's own Name Servers with one's domain.  But with Freenom its DNS is great.  I chose to use Freenom's DNS instead of Vesta CP by creating an A Record in the Freenom Panel.  That went effortless and propagated almost immediately.

Freenom domains these days are not as easy to get as before though.  Something to do with how they scrutinize and compare your user details with the info in the application.  And it usually happens right at the end of the application process, annoyingly so.  But it's still possible to get a domain if you try, try and try again.  Just make sure however that you don't use the Freenom free domain for sites that get a lot of traffic, as I've heard bad stories about Freenom making the domain disappear.  My Freenom domains are mostly used with low-profile personal blogs.  I've lost the odd Freenom domain over the years due to my own fault, as one can only renew the site 2 weeks before the expiry date and not earlier.  And I have forgotten from time to time to renew it on time.  In most cases however I've been able to get the domain back.

Well with my old account it's still easy to register whichever domain you want. I did hear that Freenom is turning strict on their new accounts and so these users can definitely face a problem. My Freenom account is from 2017 Dec, and still, I do not face any issues with them. In my experience, though Freenom generally propagated slower than any other registrar maybe they have tweaked their backend I haven't used Freenom for a few months, but it's indeed good if they let users obtain a domain free of charge and use it for a year. 

I have heard (maybe these are rumors) that Freenom suspiciously cancels high-traffic domains at times and makes it a premium domain. Haven't experienced it myself however all my domains hardly used to get any traffic. 

Personally I prefer a nameserver propagation as opposed to the A record method you mentioned, however any method is fine as long as you are only planning to use the domain for a website and not a mail server, or copy over each record from Vesta DNS to Freenom.