I'm wanting to use the ESP8266 more but most things I want to interface with are 5V so it is a little annoying have to incorporate logic level shifters. How you found an easier way to deal with it?

I believe lots of people have found it will cope with 5V but of course that's out of spec. They're only a couple of dollars if you burn one out though.

I guess it comes down to how much hassle it will be for you if you need to replace the ESP8266.

That's the same problem as Raspberry Pi. For output-only digital signals there are some 5V peripherals that will accept 3V3 input levels. And for input-only, you can use a potential divider.

It's bidirectional where you need a proper level shifter. But you can get really small cheap ones. I've used them a lot on I2C interfaces. If you're careful you can design the entire system around I2C and then you only need a single level shifter.

But I've not built many things around ESP8266 just yet. Still learning about it. It's an incredibly cheap and powerful platform though.