Recently, we are increasingly seeing problems with exchanges. Some may block an account, others may be subject to hacker attacks. As you know, recently, after the death of the founder of QuadrigaCX, millions of dollars were unavailable, because he was the only person who knew the password to the cold wallet. It causes some thoughts to me. We do not know who is behind the exchange, and what actions are taken. User funds can be used for criminal activity. Therefore, it seems to me that exchangers, besides the fact that they are simpler to use, are much safer. Now I am looking for an exchanger, and I would like to learn from the community about those platforms that offer the best conditions.
It all boils down to how long and how often you are storing your funds with an exchange.
An "exchanger" in the form of some third party that processes transactions are still not trustless, except your funds stay on their platform for less time, and is sent to you directly after the transaction. That's the only advantage, here. They are still able to hold your funds, block transactions, and it has happened. So don't blindly believe in these so called "exchangers" either. If you use a platform like Binance and withdraw all funds straight away after conducting your trade, you're essentially achieving the same effect.
If you really want to, bestchange.com has a nice list that you can search through for these automated exchangers. I personally use changer.com and never had issues, but the thing with these sites are that their fees are incredibly high for the convenience you get.
As Omegastarscream said, p2p trading is probably the way to go these days. LBC and Paxful both are quite respected and even though their KYC is getting stricter as well, they provide quite good support and allow you to withdraw your funds in almost all instances. But decentralized exchanges in the future will be the way to go, as even p2p isn't trustless.