New Vector forked the matrix foundation owned projects for synapse, dendrite, and element, and pulled all their devs, changing the license and bringing them under closer control. The foundation repos are now archived, and only the new vector owned ones are being actively developed. They sell an enterprise license for their element server suite that, at least according to their copy, seems more performant, and also offers admin tools that the free version lacks.

If you want to run a public instance that allows registration, you pretty much need some kind of external admin tool for moderation.

It's of course still better than pretty much all proprietary options, but also quite some room for improvement.