I am planning to shift from Aternos to a paid Minecraft server since the queue times are too long and I don't mind paying a small amount for a server in general.
I am looking for a cheap alternative that has similar functionalities to what Aternos provides like mod support, console, server permissions, backups etc but with additional features expected from a paid server. I plan to play with not more than 6 players at once and even lesser players on average. My friends and I won't be playing regularly and we won't be in need of high specs as long as the server remains reasonably stable when running farms or other contraptions.
I tried to use Exaroton as it was made by the Aternos team and I don't have any complaints with its features but its payment provider was just not accepting any mode of payment I offering. I dealt with this issue long enough to realize it's not worth trying anymore.
There are a ton of Minecraft hosting providers out there but I want the community's suggestions on which among them are trustworthy or value for money. I will go through all of the recommendations and choose the one that suits my needs the best.
To be frank, I don't have the spare resources or time to self host a server especially when I haven't had any prior experience. As stated earlier, I don't mind paying for one. I just want to find a middle ground where I get the convenience of having someone else take care of the hosting for me and also not pay exorbitant amount of monthly fees for something I am not going to utilize often. I hardly get a few hours each day to play with my friends anyways so I want to make sure the time we spend together is worth it. I want to minimize the time spent booting up the server which made me look for a paid alternative in the first place and I'm sure figuring out to host the server by myself along with fixing the related issues would essentially be a different way to consuming the same amount of time if not more.