Been selfhosting synapse for about 1.5 years in a docker compose setup using bunkerweb (formerly "bunkerized nginx", which better explains it premise) reverse proxy, eturnal for TURN and postgres, also recently added livekit and MAS for element call and element X compatibility. All that runs on a small 2vcore/4gb VPS, and it runs pretty good, I experience a server crash every half a month, but that may be caused by the fact that bunkerweb isn't the most lightweight solution (they actually require 8GB RAM minimum, so I'm already beneath the limit), and also because I run some other software (mailserver, ebook server, plex, etc..).

My experience as a administrator has been pretty good, perhaps it's because from the beginning I was optimistic, it suited my needs as I wanted a selfhosted, modern and fairly convenient communication platform. From what I recall, most problems during configuration were caused mostly by bunkerweb (or rather my inability to correctly set it up to proxy requests correctly and not hijack the 4xx and 5xx HTTP codes). Synapse itself has been a pleasure to maintain, but also bear in mind that I did not tinker with with it, I basically set it up and let it run for about a year and then added MAS and livekit.

Yeah, disk usage sucks, for about 5-10 active users and 1.5 year usage my postgres "schemas" folder clocks at 10Gibs. It doesn't include the media_store catalog where synapse keeps media (images, videos). The homeserver is federated and I joined a couple of big rooms in the past. Mechanics mentioned in the links below do help though:

https://matrix-org.github.io/synapse/v1.40/admin_api/purge_h...

https://github.com/matrix-org/rust-synapse-compress-state

Clientwise also sucks, but I think enough has already been said on this matter. But it's good enough to keep my nontechnical friends using it. They do hate it, but not enough to kick me in the arse. Would love to say that this proves that element clientside is usable, but I also have to admit that my friends are just hella good guys who would even write pigeon mail to me if I stopped using anything else for communication :) for me as a techie, element is obviously alright. Clunky, but works. I think clients simply need more time.

What irritates me is the Matrix authentication service (MAS), it's kind of a separate service for matrix homeservers that handles logins specifficaly. You can't use element X without it. However when it's enabled, you cannot log in from your client, instead a web browser opens and shows the login panel where you have to authorize, and then it should return to the client. Except in my case it simply doesn't :( I observed that for some reason chromium based browsers won't redirect back to the element app, and it doesn't know that the authorization has been granted. I managed to bypass it by copying the URL and opening it on firefox, but in one instance even that didn't work.

But other than that MAS problems everything has been fine from administration standpoint. I think it simply needs more time, as it already has traction, I see that a lot of new projects seem to include a matrix room in their social/communication channels, frequently it's the only option besides the bugtracker. And I'm willing to wait patiently :)

edit: added links for people who also struggle with disk space usage