I generally advise newbies to start with Ancestry.com (with a cheap offer), then get FTM for reporting and backup - FTM is usually effectively free considering the extension of ACOM membership which comes as a side benefit. ACOM rather than the competitors mainly because of its all-round search performance.
The second piece of advice is very, very important. After a month or two, think about how you're going to publish your results, because it will affect how you need to enter your information (using any tool). Regardless of what method you propose, eg book, website, pdf reports, etc., you'll find that there is a 'best' way to enter facts, media and stories so that they look good to you when you publish them. It's much better to get these things right early in the piece, rather than have to go back and change everything you've done.
For example, Comments in ACOM aren't copied to FTM and can't be used if you publish anything from FTM. I originally included my summary of each individual in a Comment, but eventually went back and copied them into the individual's Person Notes (even though this isn't visible to others in ACOM). You also find you need to be reasonably disciplined in how you use the Location and Description field for different types of Facts, and how you document sources and citations.
When you start - unless you're being mentored - you haven't got a clue of what's good and what's not, so you need to get some experience before working out your own protocols. Note also that publishing tools have their own quirks, and you'll need to cater for these quirks in your family tree data (or change tools).
Andrew