I hear you (and others), which is why we're trying to solve these kinds of barriers to XMPP adoption, with Snikket. It's a preconfigured server that can be self

I hear you (and others), which is why we're trying to solve these kinds of barriers to XMPP adoption, with Snikket. It's a preconfigured server that can be self-hosted, or there is a hosted service available (you can migrate between them). Also included in the project are client apps with consistent feature set and behaviours across platforms (currently Android/iOS). This includes things you mentioned such as smooth file sharing, server-side storage, end-to-end encryption, etc. It's still relatively early days for the project (launched last year), but I guess my point is - if the things you listed are all that's holding you back from XMPP, try Snikket and give us some feedback :)