Our great sponsors
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Purpur
Purpur is a drop-in replacement for Paper servers designed for configurability, and new fun and exciting gameplay features.
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WorkOS
The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.
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Paper
The most widely used, high performance Minecraft server that aims to fix gameplay and mechanics inconsistencies
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List of software to pick from here
If you need the vanilla software's features, trying to decide between a server software for a vanilla server is hard, there are many forks claiming to be the best. If you don't need any plugins on your server you can use a Fabric server with server-side optimization mods. The most commonly used vanilla software with plugin support is SpigotMC and its forks, PaperMC, Purpur etc. Another popular vanilla software with plugin support is SpongeVanilla, its primary use is in forge-spigot hybrid servers, in the form of SpongeForge, but it can be used with just vanilla. The SpongeAPI doesn't have as big of a variety of plugins created for it as SpigotMC so you might need to create some of the plugins yourself. There is server software that is designed/optimized for faction/KitPVP or some other types of gamemodes but many are mass-produced and are abandoned quickly.
If you need the vanilla software's features, trying to decide between a server software for a vanilla server is hard, there are many forks claiming to be the best. If you don't need any plugins on your server you can use a Fabric server with server-side optimization mods. The most commonly used vanilla software with plugin support is SpigotMC and its forks, PaperMC, Purpur etc. Another popular vanilla software with plugin support is SpongeVanilla, its primary use is in forge-spigot hybrid servers, in the form of SpongeForge, but it can be used with just vanilla. The SpongeAPI doesn't have as big of a variety of plugins created for it as SpigotMC so you might need to create some of the plugins yourself. There is server software that is designed/optimized for faction/KitPVP or some other types of gamemodes but many are mass-produced and are abandoned quickly.
Now you need to think about what features your server needs, like chests, combat, redstone etc. If your server doesn't need many vanilla features you may want to look into using a server software built from the ground up, like Minestom or Krypton. The vanilla server will work for whatever you decide but will not have the performance compared to software without all the features.