Most Minecraft server advice, this blog included, points people toward Paper over the official vanilla server, and for good reason: better performance, plugin support, and extra configuration, at the cost of nothing most players notice. That advice is right for most servers. It is worth being honest about the cases where it is not.
Vanilla's actual advantages
Running the unmodified official server means there is no fork-specific code anywhere in the stack, gameplay matches singleplayer exactly, with zero risk of a plugin, config tweak, or fork-specific behavior quietly changing something. For purist SMPs, speedrunning-adjacent communities, or anyone specifically distrustful of non-Mojang code touching their world, this guarantee has real value that no amount of Paper performance numbers replaces.
Vanilla is also the simplest possible setup: no plugin ecosystem to evaluate, no extra config files beyond server.properties, and nothing to keep updated except the server jar itself. For a two-person world where neither of you has ever wanted a plugin, that simplicity is not a limitation, it is exactly what you asked for.
Where vanilla genuinely falls short
The moment you want more than a handful of concurrent players, or you are exploring a large area of the world, vanilla's largely single-threaded design starts to show. This is not a close call, it is the entire reason Paper exists, and it becomes very noticeable well before "large server" territory. Vanilla also has zero mechanism for adding functionality: no economy plugins, no land claiming, no custom commands, nothing beyond built-in vanilla commands and server.properties options.
An honest recommendation
If any of the following is true, stay on vanilla: you specifically want the guarantee of unmodified Mojang code, your world is small enough that performance has never been a problem, or you are confident you will never want a plugin. If none of those apply, and especially if you are unsure, Paper costs you nothing (same core gameplay, same world format) while giving you real performance headroom and the option to add plugins whenever you want, even if that is "never."
Switching later costs nothing
Because Paper reads and writes the same world format as vanilla, moving from one to the other is not a migration, it is a version change with your existing world intact. Tick Hosting's panel lets you switch between vanilla and Paper (or back) from the dashboard in a couple of clicks on any plan, including the free tier, so trying Paper is not a one-way decision. Get started on Tick Hosting's plans page.