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UPDATED AND REVISED AS OF: 12/17/18

I know many people are upset about the many issues plaguing deviantART over the last couple of years. To list a few, we have the updates to core membership that caused a surprise price hike of 45% overnight, laying off staff and the subsequent worsening of the ticket queue system, inconsistent staff responses, the whole eclipse debacle, lack of interest in properly handling issues of art theft, bullying, harassment, and general disgruntlement with site policy. It seems only reasonable that many of us are looking for alternate sites to use. I have personally moved off the platform and no longer answer my messages here. That's how unwelcome I feel here and uninterested I am in using the platform anymore. I always think it's important not to rely too heavily on one person or one service, so I would like to support you all in spreading your wings and broadening your horizons. It's a good idea to at least consider registering and participating in other sites also, even if you don't leave dA.

While the standard social media sites like Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook do support visual posts, they are limited. Instagram is intended for mobile use only, although workarounds in chrome do exist. That being said, the display is limited, and engagement is limited to a mobile platform. It is, however, useful for getting your work out there to be noticed and directing people to your main webpages. Twitter is notable for being bad for long text posts, and Tumblr is customizeable but can be very disorganized, and any form of community there is very disjointed. Tumblr is also suffering from an identity crisis and will no longer be supporting NSFW content. Likewise, Facebook has a heavy censorship policy, similar to usersub on Imgur. Facebook and Twitter compress and shrink images in a terrible way that will destroy the view of high resolution art. Patreon is a great site, but it's better used as a hub for your collective site links and a place to ask for donations in support of your work. Thus, Patreon is a better place to traffic your viewers to rather than a place where you can be a part of a community and a source for gathering an audience. Because of the lack of obvious alternatives to deviantart, I have spent a lot of time over the last few years working hard to try out a number of sites and see how I feel about them.

Good alternatives I would suggest to people (not necessarily all art sites but can be used for art) are listed below. Sites that contain explicit material will not be hyperlinked, but enough info will be given for you to find them.

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R A T I N G K E Y
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Each category will be given a rating of pass, neutral, or fail based on my personal opinion after extensive testing.
Please note this is judged only by me. Try each site for yourself to decide whether or not it's right for you!

Pass -
Neutral - ♦
Fail -

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C A T E G O R I E S
--------------------------Intuitive | Design | Display | Inclusive| Engaging | NSFW | SupportIntuitive - How easy is it to learn use the site as a newcomer?
Design - How nice is the overall layout and look of the site?
Display - Does the site display visual art well? (Fail would mean it down-scales resolution very badly or suffers from other related issues)
Inclusive - How well does the site support different forms of media (drawn work, rendered work, writing, videos, etc.) as well as new artists, who may still be learning the basics of their mediums, anatomy, etc.?
Engaging- Is the site busy enough to engage new users? Do people get welcomed? Is feedback/critique on uploads available?
NSFW - Does the site support explicit adult content?
Support - Does the site have responsive staff who handle issues fairly and appropriately?

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S I T E L I S T
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ArtStation   Intuitive | Design | Display | Inclusive | Engaging | NSFW | Support ♦Similar to DrawCrowd with an emphasis on being hired by people for jobs or contracts. There is much support for helping artists find jobs, and the gallery does support some level of newer creator work, though the skill level of work displayed seems to be mid-high level, not beginner. Engagement on newer submissions is very low, and the site does not seem to have a strong social community. While some mildly suggestive content is on display in the gallery, it does not appear that they allow or support more excplicit adult content.

ConceptArt  Intuitive ♦ | Design | Display ♦ | Inclusive | Engaging ♦ | NSFW | Support ♦An art-specific site for more advanced users, like DrawCrowd (for those of you who remember DrawCrowd when it was a functioning website) and ArtStation. ConceptArt has its own forums and includes places to advertise yourself and get hired, ask for help, a workshop area for learning, and a gallery for finished art. This is a truly great site for artists who have gotten off the ground a bit with their work. My only complaint is that it is built off of of an older forum software, and the site design is ugly enough to give you a headache. On the up-side, figuring out how to post isn't too difficult because the software is very rudimentary.

EroLair(.com)Intuitive | Design | Display | Inclusive | Engaging ♦ | NSFW | Support This site, for those of you who aren't aware, was created by yours truly. Please take my ratings with that in mind. Erolair supports NSFW content far beyond the limits of DA's rules and in fact has very little limitation. It is built off of more modern forum software than ConceptArt and Weasyl, and thus offers more exciting and engaging features and has more potential for update and growth. While it doesn't have a team of developers behind it (just me!), it is created with much love, and updates to the website are frequent and based off of user input. Erolair has a growing community of kind and supportive creators of various mediums, including drawn and rendered visual art, video/film, and literature. We welcome you to join us!

Weasyl   Intuitive | Design ♦ | Display | Inclusive ♦ | Engaging ♦ | NSFW | Support ♦ An inclusive multimedia art and literature-focused site that presents possibly the best feature-based alternative to deviantart I have reviewed so far. The submission process is very similar to that of dA, and it has a really solid profile suite. The site design is a little uninspired, but the layout is clean, and most features are pretty easy to understand how to use. It looks like at this time, Weasyl does support adult content (ex. depictions of a sex scene or aroused genetalia). It doesn't seem terribly frequent on the gallery but is there and doesn't appear to be barred in their community guidelines.

ello  Intuitive | Design | Display ♦ | Inclusive | Engaging ♦ | NSFW ♦ | Support ♦A Social site, like facebook or twitter, but with an emphasis on being for creative people. This site has an overall vibe somewhere between wysp and instagram. The overall experience is decent, although user engagement varies. The site does support NSFW content, but you are required to flag your account as NSFW in your settings to avoid breaking their community guidelines. The site is not developed to include support for literary work, but posts work such that it isn't terrible to post written work, albeit there is a total lack of organization for such pieces.

Wysp  Intuitive | Design | Display | Inclusive | Engaging ♦ | NSFW ♦ | Support ♦A social site made specifically for art. I'd list its atmosphere as somewhere between ello and DrawCrowd (for those of you who used DrawCrowd when it was up). The front page of the site and user engagement is pretty decent, if a little low traffic at times. The major downsides to this site are lack of customization tools for the user profiles. As per their terms, "You are free to submit posts that contain artistic nudity, or otherwise artist mature or adult content, as long as you tag them as such." That being said, there does not seem to be much adult content on the site, and I wasn't able to find anything explicit. The implication of this observation is that they may only support mild nudity.

Hentai-Foundry(.com) Intuitive | Design | Display ♦ | Inclusive | Engaging ♦ | NSFW | Support Many people know this for its wildly adult content, and the site has been around for ages. That being said, the site framework is not very well updated, and the forums are so terrible, it's not a wonder why many on the site opt not to use them. Speaking from a personal standpoint for a moment, I would like to note that I offered to help provide free, custom-created assets for the site staff to update the look and feel of their forums (to clarify, I did not ask for development access, only offered to give them free custom graphics) and was told they would be "updating very soon". This was in early 2015, if memory serves. Since then, they updated the site background on the art face of the website and changed their header graphic. As of 12/17/18, their forums are just as terrible as they were when I offered to help years ago. No changes whatsoever have taken place. Do not expect this platform to be modernized or offer user support in the slightest. Aside from that, H-F suffers from the usual staff inconsistency in decision-making, and new submissions are put through a moderator approval queue that can be declined for a number of reasons, both standardized and subjective. Many I have spoken to do not like this platform because they feel it is not fair and does not support growing artists who have not yet hit their peak skill level. While this platform does support writers and is inclusive in regards to literature, its general submission process and inconsistency gives it a fail on the inclusive category.

Pixiv(.net) Intuitive ♦ | Design | Display | Inclusive ♦ | Engaging | NSFW | Support ♦Similar to Hentai-Foundry in that it many contains adult works and fetish-related content but also has plenty of non-adult stuff as well. The main focus of the site is for art of a manga or anime genre, though other styles are posted in abundance as well. I am not sure about quality requirements, but more advanced users tend to use the site. The site can be a bit clunky and difficult to use at times, especially with a lot of non-english users and text appearing throughout the site at times that can be confusing. Also, user engagement seems to be pretty hit or miss. Additionally, there is some concern about content restrictions in the future based on where the site is hosted.

In summary, I would suggest EVERYONE make a page on as many creative-focused sites as you feel comfortable with. It is important not to rely on just one site and put up with it if changes are made that you disagree with or that you perhaps are not made in the best interest of the community.

Using popular social media sites like Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook is also suggested, but keep in mind their policy, customization, and display limitations. UserSub on Imgur is a good place to get very critical feedback of ONLY SFW content, so if you post there, keep in mind, people on imgur tend to be a very heavy mix of supportive, rude, critical, and downright mean.

I hope this helps!
Empower yourselves! Don't let deviantART walk all over you. We as creators have been feeding it money hand-over-fist for years, and the current level of support from staff is abysmal, site updates very questionable, and forums at times completely unusable. Take some control for yourself, and spread your creative reach. Good luck to all of you out there! ♥