> I think it's gotten much easier to stand up a matrix-synapse server than when you last tried, and suspect you left with a bad taste after joining popular room

> I think it's gotten much easier to stand up a matrix-synapse server than when you last tried, and suspect you left with a bad taste after joining popular rooms Exactly that's the problem: If you join a popular room your server will need more resources than the 5 USD/month server typically has. I haven't tried whether 20 USD/month would be enough, but honestly that's a bit more than I am willing to spend for playing around. But running something with the limitation you cannot join popular rooms didn't seem worth trying either.