I seriously have no idea what's your problem with synapse. I've been running my own homeserver for over a year now and synapse is a perfect piece of software. I installed it without any hassle and it's been running without a single issue since then. I install new versions on the same day they are released without skipping a heartbeat: that's how good it is.

I used to have more complaints about matrix clients, especially on Android, but things got much better recently.