I've been running unfederated Matrix instance with sqlite for 10 years for 10-20 people some very active. In WAL mode sqlite is fine i am not sure why it would get corrupted.

Few years ago we did a data/history wipe (i managed to migrate accounts) because we switched to conduit.rs with sqlite. I very much prefer conduit to synapse.

I never had issue with sqlite it was mostly Synapse. With recent changes i think they are completely dropping the ball on small instances and it feels like the ecosystem is splitting. Element X is just not very good. It seems to exist to kill classic element and since for element x you need some server features that not all alternative synapse servers support.