I’ve been using Matrix for several years now, and am very happy with it, and with the progress that it made.

I have one instance just for me, which I use for general chatting, as well as for some light experiments (I’m toying with some client development and trying new plugins or appservices now and then).

I have another, private and undfederated instance for family comms. I set it up at the very beginning of the Covid-19 era, when nobody knew how long and how severe will the travel restrictions be, and we’ve been using it heavily ever since.