First of all, thank you for your recommendation. I was on the fence between Siskin IM and Monal, so I went with Monal to replace AstraChat.
I’ve used Signal before and it was fine but I prefer not to give a phone number to open an account; there are other services that don’t require it.
Speaking of services, I use Simple X, Session, Matrix and Delta Chat (occasionally). Most of my eccentric mix of family, friends and colleagues are happy to try something new or switch as long as it doesn’t require a phone number to sign up. They’re slowly leaving Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram and limiting access to their iMessage.
In my experience, Session syncs very well between my devices which makes it my favorite. I chose FluffyChat over Element because of the App Privacy in iOS.






Just to give you an idea of what Reddit collects on iOS (minus algorithms):
So I agree with everyone else… a lot.