One of my customers went through FT232 based boards like a kid goes through a bag with candy so I needed a way more rugged solution than just a chip with bare wires and needed so many that I turned it into a product. It is based on a CP2103 and besides RX, TX, CTS and RTS UART signals it also has RS485 (for short range), a 3.3V 90mA output (or external 1.8V to 3.3V input) and it can be used as an NXP LPC1000/LPC2000 programmer. At 80 euro (ex. VAT but including EEVblog discount) it isn't cheap but so far none has failed even though some are hot-plugged all day long in a production line (which the FT323 based boards didn't survive even with 1k series resistors on rx/tx).