Pandoc is far and away more powerful than textutil hands down. If you've got pandoc available you likely don't need textutil. However, as you point out, pandoc

Pandoc is far and away more powerful than textutil hands down. If you've got pandoc available you likely don't need textutil. However, as you point out, pandoc isn't built in. Like sips it's nice to know it's available on a default macOS install.