I was checking for free Minecraft hosting servers and I found this really good working hosting site; https://aternos.org/ I'm currently running 1.7.2 with a few plugins (they have an easy plugin installer) and 10 player slots. The only downside is the 10 player slots if you want to host a public server. But it's totally worth it since it's free. PS: No need for port forwarding or any of that shit. PS2: Also if you're not using the amount of slots (example; if you picked 10 player slot server and only you are playing) you get a warning point, you can get a max of 10. What the punishment is after those 10, idk.
The punishment will probably be the server gets deleted or they reduce the slots or something since your not using the server to it's max.