Stay in Pompei?

I found the town rather uninspiring, and Naples has more than enough to entertain you. If you are not interested in Naples, you can stay in Sorrento or Salerno or even a village (transport dependent). It really just depends what you are looking for.
We need a clearer picture of your itinerary, include the month.

We stayed in Pompei for 4 or 5 nights in 2022, and enjoyed it very much. We wanted to maximize our time for exploring the ruins of Pompeii, Ercolano, Oplontis and Stabiae. We could have easily used Pompei as a base for exploring the Amalfi Coast, although I liked Salerno very much as well.

We stayed here:

https://www.hotelforumpompeii.com/en/

All of our meals in Pompei were excellent and quite reasonably priced, but Garum was our favorite.

https://www.garumpompei.it/il-ristorante

Month and Year???

https://search.ricksteves.com/?button=&date_range=2y&filter=Travel+Forum&query=stay+in+pompeii&utf8=%E2%9C%93

There is no earthly reason to stay in the uninspiring, workaday modern CITY of Pompeii. I'm sure there are good restaurants there, but both Naples and Sorrento (farther away) are pleasant places to spend the evening, looking for a restaurant. For research purposes, the famous excavation (in Pompeii city) is actually named Pompeii Scavi.

Note that you CANNOT re-enter Pompeii Scavi later on a same-day ticket. And the five-site special ticket only allows one visit to each of the five sites. This is not like a season pass to Disneyland. (I think there IS a season pass for Pompeii Scavi, but it's priced appropriately.)

You need to determine whether you have the urban fortitude to a) Sleep in gritty but historic Naples b)Ride the gritty, hot, crowded, even jammed Circumvesuviana rapid transit train between Naples, Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, and Sorrento. Sorrento books up six months in advance.

https://www.visitpompeiivesuvius.com/en/naples-to-sorrento-train-schedule

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/request-for-naples-advice

I do think it made sense for EP--someone doing multiple visits to Pomeii and an aficionado of the related sites so to speak.
But for a "regular" visit and a first visit to the area, for sure there are better places and no need to change hotels. One exception might be in summer, when getting there as early as possible would be important.

There is a bus to Pompeii too, I have heard it is preferable to the commuter train without stops en route.

We just got back from Italy and like Estimated Prophet above we based in Pompei for 4 nts. We were driving and I had no desire to drive in Naples, plus the Pompei site was my wife’s #1 thing to see on the trip. We found a B&B with parking included, drove to the archaeological sites, drove to Positano and Sorrento for the day, and took the Trenitalia train into Naples for the day. After visiting Naples I’m glad we didn’t stay there - “gritty” is one thing but more graffiti than the South Bronx is pretty off-putting.

If you do stay in Pompei check out “Stuzzico by Lucius” - we had two great dinners there!

Good luck with the trip!

I stayed at Hotel Forum Pompeii in 2022 and liked it a lot. I appreciated the hotel's proximity to the less crowded park entrance near the amphitheatre.

I just returned from Naples this week. I wanted to revisit Pompeii, but the Hotel Forum Pompeii had no vacancies. I wound up staying in Naples near(-ish) the train station. It was easy and safe for me to take the Circumvesuviana commuter train to Pompeii, but I would have preferred being in town.

Thanks all, that’s very helpful. Hotel Forum was already on my list, and I’ll think more about Naples. Kind of rush planning, we’re going in March for 10 days. Will spend a few nights in Rome, which we’ve visited before, and in addition to Pompéi plan to stay on Capri for 2 nights. We do not plan to rent a car.