Thanks! Those are good things to look at. I hadn't heard of Stickpiston yet. I'd already come across Aternos, although I've also seen server hosting for a few dollars per month, which is totally fine if I need it for only one month. And I understand it's also possible to host from my own PC. I haven't made that decision yet, but it's good to know the options.
Either way, I think the ability to customise is pretty important.
Meanwhile I'm continuing to do my own research, and I think I'm starting to understand the difference between mods, plugins and datapacks. I was hoping to find a way to download instant minigames and include them in my server, but I haven't found anything like that yet.
