Just wanted to share a thread for those who don't regularly venture out of the bear site. Can't cross-post since it's defederated. It's small but has some numbers about community counts, active users, etc and links to more info from https://lemmyverse.net/. Thought it was notable that Hexbear shows up no matter how you sort it.
OP image is community count sorted by active users in the last month.
Edit: sorted by comments
Yep, my thoughts exactly. Do what you want to, of course, but just want to put it out there that I was in your shoes and don't regret jumping. I still check in on .ml every once in a while, but I don't spend all my time fighting libs in the trenches anymore.