It's been very flakey for me, I won't get anything new then all the sudden I get a huge influx of posts from the past few weeks. This has been across multiple communities.
I tried upgrading my instance to .18 but boy was that a buggy mess. It seems to just be an issue with federation overall.
I host my own matrix instance for my wife, a few friends and I. It has worked great for us. They can either use a web app, or an app on their phone.