For anyone interested in trying Realms, there is a free trial at the moment (on PC at least) which I believe lasts for a month. Tried it last night with a friend for my first ever experience of multiplayer Minecraft and had a blast. We started from scratch and not in the greatest location so survival was genuinely a struggle at first, but we are almost self-sufficient now. Still a huge bucket list of stuff to do though. No complaints with the server although it did have to reset at one point, but we started up again where it had left us. I wasn't relishing setting up a server, just the two of us want to play it for now, and this way either of us can log in and gather resources whenever we like.