I could go on and on about the bad things about amibroker. No doubt its a cheap software in terms of pricing. But that doesn't mean it's any good.
I m talking about the user experience. I can write about it too , but until you experience using it , you will never know. Believe me i tried to force myself to use amibroker many times , but it simply didn't feel right.
A simple example of comparison b/n esignal and amibroker is the concept of pages. On each page you have any number of charts displayed. I watch about 65 instruments ( Currencies/Indexs/Commodities/NIFTY Stocks) and its so easy to move around and scan them in esignal. Try doing that in amiboker, it doesn't even have a concept of page. you have keep clicking to move around the charts. It's hard to view 50-60 instruments. so you end up struggling to find opportunities. Esignal makes that very easy for you and comfortable, even your grandma can use it, its that easy to use and then there is the data feed quality. No indian data provider can match it.
Anyways, we all know for whom the amibroker is marketed for. No serious professional trader uses it at-least as far as i know.
About the price. you pay for taxes/brokerage and so on..Its a business expense. Imagine you are running a business and you want to save money so you travel by say train/bus instead of plane. But in this business time = money. so you have to be willing to spend to make money. The time spent in traveling in a bus/train could cost you more....think about it.
Anyways, its all good. use whatever you are comfortable with.....have a good weekend!!!
edit: also if people cannot afford it , that means they do not have a sufficient a/c size to make any kind of money. Making pennies will kill you in this business.