Mixing software

I say go with Neutron. iZotope is known for making very intuitive plugins (great for beginners), I remember the first time I used Ozone was such a breath of fresh air. Neutron has been getting really great ratings and reviews.

just remember to really listen before you just start smooshing stuff... all compressors and EQ are only as good as the ears and intuition of the person operating them no matter how intuitive the interface at first appears and dynamics processing has rapidly overtaken parametric EQ as the most abused mix tool, often recklessly applied, destroying otherwise fine mixes.... the more control a compressor or EQ gives you the more potential it has to fuck everything up! the popularity of simple old hardware designs to this day is not just the sound quality of ancient analog electronics but the lack of features which prevent the mixer from getting excited tweaking, mangling a sound that was well recorded in the 1st place

for beginners I generally recommend they focus on solid balance above all and only apply dynamics and EQ correctively (this may not men there's anything wrong with a sound in isolation but that without a taste of processing it is fighting the other sounds for bandwidth) until they understand what they're doing well enough to consider more advanced techniques like parallel buss compression, sidechaining and creative over EQing (after a few decent sounding mixes on varying styles of music), but YMMV! I am dinosaur.