I was against portals initially. I play with a friend and as we expanded we would build these cool new places and keep pushing the borders farther out. But as our old places got farther away, then we just stopped going to them, which started to feel unfortunate. It felt like investing into building wasn't worth it anymore because we would just move on and not visiting the old ones.

So we decided to use portals, which felt great. We could now visit our old places easily. We tried to find unique uses for them to give them some reason to come back too. It also renewed our building again as we now knew we would still be visiting them, even when we got farther away.

So I would say, if you are into the creative building aspect of this game, then I would encourage you to use portals. You'll enjoy your creations more when access to them is easy.