Aspire VS Mach 4 for a Accu-Cut CNC router table

We have purchased a older Accu-Cut CNC Router table (11’x6’) My Dad is an old Machinist and says G-Code is G-Code, I am a hobbyist and learning. I have MasterCam and AutoCad and know this would be difficult for me to do artsy designs and lettering thru those programs. Which of these two programs between Aspire and Mach 4 are the easiest and most reliable to use? I guess i need some pros and cons of the two, I like the way Aspire looks initaly and need arguing points for this hard sell. I do not want to invest in a program and not function properly. Thanks for the help.

Aspire is for creating/modeling/designing and producing G-Code and Mach4 is for running your control/machine with the G-Code that was made in Aspire.

Yes, Aspire and Mach4 are completely different programs, that do completely different things.

Mach4 is a machine controller, nothing more.

Aspire is a 2D drawing/3D relief modelling/CAM program. Aspire is probably the easiest to use program of it's type. But 3D modeling takes a lot of artistic ability, and potentially hundreds of hours of practice to get good at it.

There's a newly released competitor to Aspire called CarveCo, that used to be known as ArtCAM. It's probably a better deal than Aspire right now. In some ways, it's more powerful. But probably not quite as easy to use, https://carveco.com/