Essential plugins for your server - Paper
Server Core
EssentialsX: EssentialsX is a free and open-source plugin, it's been in the community since 2015, it's well known for being feature rich and constantly updated
zEssentials: A paid and open-source alternative, it's been developed in 2024, by Maxlego08. It supports both Paper and Folia, it provides similiar features to EssentialsX's and a modular structure (you enable and disable what you need)
Ban System
AdvancedBan: AdvancedBan is a free and open-source plugin developed since 2015, its last update was on October 2020. It offers database support and discord hooks through addons. It is still compatible with Paper 1.21+
AdvancedBanX: A fork of AdvancedBan, which is also free and open source, as of 2024, it's being actively developed on to provide more features, it works with AdvancedBan's addons.
BanManager: An AdvancedBan(X) free and open-source alternative offering a web interface for both admins and players.
LiteBans; A paid close-source plugin offering a web interface. As of 2024 it is being actively developed on.
Economy
Vault: Vault in itself is not an Economy plugin, rather it allows the usage of various economy plugins by hooking them into it. This plugin is quite essential for today's servers, most economy related plugins use its API as a standard, for actual economy, the Server Core plugins support it.
PlayerPoints: Ever tought to have a second economy? PlayerPoints allows you to do so, offering great management over the economy. The configuration is simple and user friendly.
Permissions
LuckPerms: LuckPerms is a community standard as of 2024, providing seamless permission management through both in-game commands and a web interface.
Tab and Scoreboard
TAB: TAB is a free and open-source plugin developed by Neznamy, it offers various features and supports servers as old as Minecraft Java 1.5.X, it's configuration is easy to understand and with great customizability.
AntiCheat:
Grim: Grim is one of the best free and open-source anticheats available within the community, offering various checks with the least false positive possible.
NoCheatPlus: NoCheatPlus is a great free and open-source plugin, it offers great customizability and various checks with partial support for Geyser (bedrock players).
Vulcan: Vulcan is a paid anticheat sold for about $20, it's said to be one of the best anticheats available on the market
Polar: Polar anticheat is a subscription based anticheat offering great combat checks for 1.8.X
Combat Logging
CombatLogX: CombatLogX is a plugin developed by SirBlobman (affiliated with the AlienUniverse brand). The plugin offers various hooks for plugins such as PlaceholderAPI and WorldGuard.
NPCs
Citizens: Citizens is a feature rich open source plugin, supporting various entities and paths, it hooks into Dnizen for npc scripting and much more.
ZNPCsPlus: ZNPCsPlus is a fork a ZNPCs, ZNPCsPlus is a minimalistic, performance focused plugin, in comparison to Citizens it's much more lightweight, but offers less features. Great for lobbies
Placeholders
PlaceholderAPI: PlaceholderAPI is a community standard plugin, providing support for placeholders hence allowing dynamic values. Most plugins support it, it offers various expansions and is actively developed.