Yeah, HitBTC has the most volume, and it has a terrible reputation. See all the reports of "maintenance issues" when a coin traded there can be sold at a higher price on another exchange.
HitBTC sucks less than a lot of other exchanges IME. It's not my favorite exchange but it's decent enough that I rank it pretty highly.
I have noticed that if you look at reviews for different exchanges, most will have a large amount of negative reviews. Some deserve it but I suspect that a lot of the reviews are not real - competing exchanges may have paid someone to write fake negative reviews.
Not saying HitBTC is the best or anything.
As an exercise, try this: Take the name of your absolute favorite exchange, combine it with the word "review" (sans quotation marks) and do a Google search for that. Look through the results.
Yeah, HitBTC has the most volume, and it has a terrible reputation. See all the reports of "maintenance issues" when a coin traded there can be sold at a higher price on another exchange.