There is a communities feature

Similar in concept to Reddit’s sub-reddits. It allows for individuals to create and reblog posts into topic specific groups.

It’s a good way to find people to follow and quickly fill up your feed, but it also means you don’t necessarily have to follow a user’s blog to see posts from them on topics you enjoy.

Staff is transparent about funding and finances.

They have a budget breakdown on their donations page so you know exactly where your money is going.

There’s also a donation counter updated daily so everyone can see how close we are to reaching our monthly goal.

Apart from January 2024, Pillowfort has reached or exceeded the donation goal every month, with excess from other months making up for the shortfall in January.

As of this post, Pillowfort is funded through January 2025.

It is accessed through your browser.

The mobile site has some bugs and isn’t as smooth as desktop, but it still works well. Currently I’m on mobile full time and my experience has been nearly the same as it was on desktop.

A progressive web app (PWA) is in the works and it’s very high on their priority list. It should be out sometime in late 2024 - early 2025.

Tags actually work!

Unlike Tumblr’s system, when you search a tag on Pillowfort the only posts that come up are ones containing that tag. It’s not looking at text in the body of the post to include in the search.

Tags are also easy to blacklist. When you don’t want to see a certain tag, blacklisting fully hides the content from you.

In addition to tagging, Pillowfort has post privacy settings. You can set posts to be viewable by logged-in users only, followers only, or mutuals only. As well as turn off reblogs and comments.

Blocking is effective.

When you block someone you will not see any of their posts, even if someone you follow reblogs their post. They can’t see anything from you either.

The most you see from them is the text “someone commented” in place of their comments on other people’s posts. It can be annoying to see, but the benefit is it allows you to see and interact with all the other comments in a thread even if someone you’ve blocked is involved.

The community is welcoming.

The community is small, but it is generally friendly. People are excited to see new users join and are very eager to answer questions and help out.

They often make guides for new users to answer FAQs and give helpful tips.

There’s also communities, like Pillowfort101, dedicated to answering questions about the site and helping people navigate.

It’s “quiet” in nice ways.

Instead of callout posts (which are explicitly prohibited), people tend to block, move on, and let Staff handle the rest. This kind of attitude amongst users makes for the most low stress social media experience I’ve ever had.

Because of its small size in comparison to Tumblr, not all tags are super active with endless scrolling.

HOWEVER-

This means that by joining and bringing your hobbies, passions, and fandoms along with you, you’re helping to build a community from the ground up!

Because of its small size, many people on Pillowfort are open to hearing about topics they otherwise wouldn’t have encountered, so don’t be shy about introducing your interests over there.

It lacks certain features.

Pillowfort does not have reblog replies. Instead, additions and conversations are done through threaded comments on a post. A benefit of this is it gives users more control over interactions with their post.

Side blogs aren’t a current feature, though it is a feature planned for the first half of 2025.

Pillowfort has DMs, but not asks. However, asks are also planned for the first half of 2025.

Arranging images in a post can be frustrating sometimes. The system is high on their priority list to update and improve though, especially before the PWA launch.

There’s not currently a good setup for alt-text. It is an option, but there’s a character limit and it’s difficult to find. The most effective form of alt-text is putting it directly into the body of a post.

There are not custom content warnings like on Cohost or Mastadon. That’s all done through relying on people to tag or to write a warning above a read-more.

Joining

There’s several options to join. There’s a waitlist, which is the easiest option and typically takes less than an hour to get through. There’s also invites, which is the quickest option. I have a couple dozen I can give out, but there’s also people in the Pillowfort tag on Tumblr giving them out from time to time. The last option is paying $5 to get an invite instantly.

In Conclusion

It’s a small site so it’s not nearly as active as big platforms like Tumblr or Twitter, but community is a major focus of the site. From my personal experience it feels more like a place to talk with people, and not just at people. You may have to be the one to initiate conversation, but if you go looking for conversation it’s not hard to find.