Experiences self-hosting an IRC bouncer?

I've been enjoying chatting on IRC and was wondering if anyone has any relevant experience with any bouncers?

I tried setting up ZNC but could not get any clients to work with it.

I finally settled on soju with goguma as client, but since no up-to-date Docker container existed, I had to create my own Dockerfile for that.

For now, it's only available on my LAN (proxied through nginx), and am uncertain if exposing it externally is a good idea (I already have a VPN, but prefer to expose services if it's safe to do so).