You can also extend the free trial period if necessary with MillMage which I found helpful last weekend since mine had expired and wanted to try the V carve feature which was easy enough to figure out for somebody who never used it before and worked well.
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Disclaimer that I work for Sienci, not Lightburn, but Sienci has had affiliate relationship in the past with Lightburn and I received this software for free - not saying this tempers my opinion, but you should be aware before accepting my opinions 
I’m a huge fan of the CAM portion of MillMage as someone who has mostly used Vectric in the past.
I found the 3D relief features a bit more intuitive to figure out on my own than Vcarve/Aspire - and I’m sure the documentation is growing for the new pro features. Vcarving was also very easy. I have not used some of the other new pro features like textures yet.
I’m a bit of a self learner, so most of my Vectric learning was self-motivated through videos. Design stage for me is relatively similar between the two suites - if you’re familiar with one you should have no issues in the other. I was able to figure out the 3d relief finishing/rough on my own with prior Vectric knowledge.
I had no issues getting the end result from STL/heightmap to a usable toolpath, including the ATC portion. As a tinkerer, I found the custom g-code blocks easier to work with than most post-processors and was able to setup what I wanted pretty easily - although part of that is my own familiarity with g-code.
I was planning on doing some inlay work for Christmas presents this year, but that is not an option as a distinct operation yet unless I want to do the male/female parts separately. You could put that in the bucket of missing things for now I guess - even if it’s technically possible
I cannot comment on the sender side of the software since tbh I have not really used it apart from basic testing for an issue on their forum. Exporting to use in gSender has worked great for everything I’ve done.
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Would be nice if they can add a feature to automatically open the generated g-code in gSender instead of saving, switching to gSender and then opening in gSender. Would make it a little more seamless.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Sounds like a solid place to start, and with the option to extend the trial it gives a real proper timeframe to test if it clicks. We are also mostly a Mac household so thats a big plus as well.
MillMage Pro sounds like it is a proper alternative to Vectric pro for a fraction of the price. Somehow i’m wondering what the catch is haha.
Do you know if it can handle multiple stl imports? Something I’ve heard people miss sometimes in Vcarve pro.