Comment by tetraca

Having set up and administrated both an XMPP and a Matrix server, XMPP is way less a pain in the ass. I've enjoyed dealing with prosody much more than either synapse or dendrite. XMPP doesn't tank my server every time I try to join a new room and it doesn't take forever to start talking in a room after you join it. And provided you're running the server, getting people onto XMPP has not been hard in my experience. I made a basic registration page with simple instructions. I have gotten people with low technical know-how to successfully register accounts and use it without issue. They just create an account, enter their username into a client I recommend, and they're ready to go (I've never even had them complain about OMEMO).