The open
Realms alternative
Gamocosm is like a home coffee machine. Or a toolkit so you can do your own repairs. Or courses posted online so everyone can learn. Gamocosm helps you host your own servers.
Why pay 24/7 if you don't play 24/7?
Gamocosm automates setting up and maintaining Minecraft servers on DigitalOcean (no referral), a cloud server provider. You only need to pay per hour, so Gamocosm users average just $0.50-$2 a month.
Give access to family and friends
Get your server running just the way you like it, then add your friends so they can play while you're away. Set a schedule to start and stop your server, or tell Gamocosm to automatically shutdown after a period of inactivity.
The server is yours and yours alone
You have full access to a Linux machine; you can install mods, additional software and even custom servers such as Cuberite, the performant C++ Minecraft server. Read more about the setup on the wiki.
Free as in freedom
It costs nothing to use Gamocosm; no bills, no ads, no tracking user habits. The source code is well documented and available for everyone's inspection and contribution.