@roomy@lemmy.world
I Would recommend conversations.im or jabberfr.org or yax.im
Generally I've not yet had any issue with any server but I don't use the providers list and didn't try the servers you mentioned.
I would not recommend the providers list. It's listing doesn't really prioritise what's actually important to a user
XMPP
XMPP (aka Jabber) is the community-owned standard for real-time federated messaging.
JoinJabber.org admin support chat
What kind of network are you on? If you use public wifi/corporate network, then some of them might block XMPP ports (namely :5222/tcp and :5223/tcp) and has other very restrictive firewalls
All I've heard about OpenFire is complaints (I don't remember specifics) and I've not yet got around to trying it out as my fourth server.
I wonder how well it works. Having a web interfaces to quickly configure it seems nice.
This is quite odd, can you give some example of clients and servers that don't work together?
Otherwise you can try the ones listed here: https://joinjabber.org/docs/servers/personal/
Ive tried 07f.de and jix.im and a couple more that I dont remember, ive found it on https://providers.xmpp.net/
Client's I use are Gajim for desktop and Conversations for Mobile.
Can't say anything about the first one, but the second one is generally reliable and up to date. Maybe you are on a strange institutional network or public wifi that blocks the standard XMPP ports?
Or perhaps broken DNS. For example the server only listens for IPv6 and the DNS server incoreectly replies NXDOMAIN for AAAA records, as apoarently the Mullvad DoH servers do...
Perhaps easiest is to check using xmpp-dns and see what it says. :D