We are not TECHNICALLY vanilla.
There are many definitions of vanilla Minecraft and it has lost a lot of meaning over the years. The technical and original meaning was a server that is using the original server JAR provided by Mojang. This JAR allowed no mods or plugins and as such was just pure Minecraft.
Other people define it as meaning only quality-of-life plugins like one-person sleep and chat management etc.
The majority of servers that claim to be vanilla however are neither of these and they offer a wide assortment of game modifications and external influences on the game. For example vote crates, donations and ranks.
We are not running the default JAR, primarily because it has far worse performance and limits our ability to run the server well. However, there are no added features or modifications to the game that are not required to run a server. The majority of the noticeable changes are custom-made and designed to be as unobtrusive as possible.
The main focus of the changes are things such as logging, ban management, chat management, performance and a custom-made new player restriction plugin that is detailed here: New Player Restrictions
As well as changes to allow bedrock and Java players to join:
There are no changes to how you would normally play single-player Minecraft, you just have people to play with now!