@tk @glitter @dushman @sun I've run them all -- Mongoose/eJabberd, Prosody, Openfire...

Prosody is probably my favorite just for being weird Lua software and low resource usage.

I don't like fighting with XEPs and trying to figure out what I need to enable to make things work. And features like marking messages as Read and syncing that between devices requires adding an SQL server to the mix, so now the monster grows more complicated

Just give me an XMPP server with a standard set of features that absolutely cannot be changed and a quality XMPP client that works on iOS. I'll pay $100 for a license to a quality iOS/MacOS XMPP client that can rival Telegram. But it doesn't exist, so nobody is getting my money I guess.