@pinguino @earthling big agree. matrix synapse is quite heavy and somewhat error prone to operate. riot isn’t too bad as a client.
prosody is a great xmpp server that is very easy to operate. i use ejabberd because i love erlang, but it isn’t extremely straightforward.
i can fully recommend conversations and gajim, but if you have ios users to worry about the client situation isn’t that great. TextSecure is the best option and it falls short in several areas imo.