Plugin Help Essentials Performance Cost

Hi I want to add Essentials to my private server. It's hosted on my computer, which I run for about 10 hours a day straight on a command prompt. I know it's a very fragile system, but I haven't the money nor the time to really look into renting or buying servers.
Anyways, I've started a Bukkit server before, and it only lasted less than 2 weeks before it started producing corrupted chunk and player data.
I had about 7 plugins, PEX, WorldEdit, WorldGuard, HolographicDisplays, FreeTeleport, and a bit more.
Since then, more memory has been installed on my computer, but I'm a bit testy when it comes to adding plugins.
I've only been using the free server software that minecraft.net provides. It's good, but not great. So I've decided to give Bukkit another try. I want to include a sort of sign shop system in my server, such as the one used in faction servers.
I heard about the Essentials plugin, which provides just that. But it seems like such a big plugin, considering the amount of commands it provides.
So I'm asking, does Essentials have a higher performance cost than most plugins, and if it does, is there an alternative to it for making sign shops and such.

 

Essentials is an extremely helpful plugin to have on any server. Performance wise Essentials doesn't have much of an effect at all, at least not any noticeable effects that could affect your server. The only way I can see your worlds corrupting is if you put maybe 256MB into a server making it barely able to run. Putting even 1GB into a server that only haves 7 plugins is far more than enough to keep all the worlds and files the way they're supposed to be.

Overall, definitely get Essentials, it'll be worth it in the long run. Also backup your files from time to time just in case you have issues like that.