The middle version (Level 2) is well under $400 and provides all the functionality needed for someone drawing the initial vector artwork in a mainstream drawing program. StitchArtist is offered in three versions ('Levels') of increasing functionality, with cross-level upgrades (at break-even pricing) should you find you need or want the next 'level' of built-in features. So I do the vector-based artwork in whatever drawing program I feel like using she imports it into StitchArtist to configure the stitching. I have seen, for example, commercial embroidery shops take the clean vector artwork supplied to them, rasterize it, and autotrace it in their 'digitizing' workflow.) (The ugly truth is, just as in sign-vinyl cutting and other NC output environments, a shop may have the best equipment and full expertise in operating it, but their 'front end' staff may still have little or no expertise in vector graphics. Better, in fact, than some results I've seen in projects jobbed out to commercial embroidery outfits. She's having good results with Embrillance StitchArtist. But it's among my wife's pretty serious hobby habits. Given that Illustrator is now only licensed via perpetual rental, that's an example of compounded dependency: Dependency upon an add-on for a particular host program, the use of which is in turn dependent upon your continued rental payments. This is a case-in-point example of why, as a general rule, I've always avoided mission-critical dependency upon third-party add-ons.

$3500 just for a vertical-market plug-in?

Illustrator embroidery plugin