Memmy and Mlem are both doing pretty well - it’s been hard to say which was better in the past, but lately I’ve been preferring Mlem more due to some really cool updates. It could very well swing back the other way though.
I’m alternating between Memmy and Mlem. They’re both great but I also prefer Memmy at the moment. The ability to tap on a picture and have it go full screen is just so useful.
Even if you own an instance, the tools are non-existent.
Some basics things that should be present but aren't:
A user directory for search and deletion
Possibility to block communities for your whole instance
Basic statistics. Both on the community and instance level
Possibility to mute a user without banning them
Allow creating a community but only after admin approval (right now it's free for all or admin only)
Easy access to server logs without having to dig directly inside the hosting server
Importing block/allow lists for federations using a file or url
Adding an administrator from the server admin UI
The API is also lacking in a way that some of those things are not possible without deploying your own API talking directly with the postgress database.
For example, if you wanted to see upvote/downvotes for each individual users, the data to calcultate it is in the database but the Lemmy API doesn't provide that functionality.
While Lemmy is great as a platform, the management side of is glueing everything together just enough to not let it implode.
My team and I are planning to start working on an AutoMod bot in the near future. It's going to be built with our custom instance in mind, but the code will he open source for everyone to use.