Both have their pros and cons.
DCU was great because it was nice to have an all-in-one service for everything DC: comics, movies and TV. Plus, the Roku app was awesome, and I dearly miss it. Besides being able to watch all of the shows and movies from a dedicated DC app on my TV, having the comics on my TV was a super nice and really cool feature. We had our own news section and encyclopedia, both of which I also miss, with exclusive articles and features separate from the main DC site. As for the community, as previously mentioned, it was smaller and more “quaint” in those days, and for some reason, I feel like it was more active. I remember seeing more users (and more different users) making more posts (and more different kinds of posts). Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places, but to me, the community just has a different feel these days than it did a year or two ago. It was also nice when @Applejack was more active in the community; I am happy for her that she got a promotion that gives her more responsibility, but it also keeps her from participating in the community as much as she used to, and it’s always nice to have that one person who’s like the leader/captain of the organization. It doesn’t feel like this community has that as much these days, either.
As for DCUI, I was initially skeptical and displeased with the DCUI launch but, three months later, nearly all of the launch day problems have been solved or cleaned up, and in fact, several improvements have been made over DCU. Namely, the DCUI behind-the-scenes staff seems to be more attentive and responsive to error reports than the DCU behind-the-scenes staff ever was. And that’s even taking the layoffs and the new staff coming in and learning the ropes into consideration. When I’ve reported comics out of order on series pages, or missing issues, I’m now noticing that they’ve usually been corrected within two weeks. Whereas previously, with DCU, it would take months or more, with multiple reports needing to be made, before an error would be corrected (if the error would even be corrected). So that’s already a massive improvement. I like that we now have more prestige, graphic novel, Vertigo and Black Label titles than we previously did (though I continue to hope that more will be added). And the debut just a few days ago of the new comic issue cover overlays has already placed DCUI leaps and bounds ahead of DCU. Simply put, and as promised, there is definitely more attention being paid to DCUI than there ever was to DCU.
So, ultimately, it’s hard to choose. I think I definitely preferred the “feel” of DCU, when it was like a special club just for DC fans. But as great as that was, I’m very happy with how DCUI has homed in on the comics, becoming more focused on making that aspect of the product as good as it can possibly be. It’s a fair trade-off, and one I appreciate.