I plan to switch to Ableton once I earn enough from music to pay for it, but that's because it's made for the kind of music I do. Everyone I know uses it, so it's easy to find advice and tutorials.
For now, Reaper and a few free VSTs will do. I find myself bumping up against the fact that Reaper was made for live music and its devs are understandably keeping the focus there, even though they do good work on the MIDI roll. They always nail down a few irritants in each release.
You'll go further and have an easier time if the community around your tools makes the same kind of music. Choosing tools mostly comes down to what you want to do. If you want to do electronic, Ableton is a good bet.
While I'm positive you know that, don't make the mistake of limiting Ableton to electronic music - it has obvious strengths in that department, but there's really no limit to the genre and style of what can be done with DAWs like Live, Logic and Co.
By the way, if Ableton remains too expensive for your taste, there's always Bitwig, which isn't quite as mature and has a much smaller, but growing community, yet it's very similar to Ableton's approach to music production.
For now, Reaper and a few free VSTs will do. I find myself bumping up against the fact that Reaper was made for live music and its devs are understandably keeping the focus there, even though they do good work on the MIDI roll. They always nail down a few irritants in each release.
You'll go further and have an easier time if the community around your tools makes the same kind of music. Choosing tools mostly comes down to what you want to do. If you want to do electronic, Ableton is a good bet.