[vazamb]

The team behind it released version 1.6 just a few days ago, so it is definitely still alive. I haven't used it since a few versions ago but I don't see we it wouldn't still solve the same use case as it did before: making it trivial to build real time collaborative web apps (that don't require extreme scale). With rethinkdb being an unsure bet and graphql not offering the same ease of development I am also not aware of a competing framework. Arguably meteor is getting better and better by integrating more with the broad node/Javascript community.

This sounds like a huge advertisment but I simply thoroughly enjoyed using meteor. If it fits your use case I'd say go for it. You can build the frontend in react and re-use it should you decide to move away from meteor. The amount of backend code you need to write to make all the realtime stuff work is significantly less than with other frameworks, so not much in terms of sunk cost there.