Welcome to the site, John. A lot of people on here use Family Tree Maker but there are some other good ones too - hopefully people who use other programs will recommend them.
Good sites to use - FamilySearch has loads of baptisms, marriages and burials and is free. Findmypast and Ancestry both have BMD indexes and all the British censuses from 1841 through to 1911 but each of them also has lots of records that the other doesn't, including images of parish registers for various places (for instance, Findmypast has all the Welsh parish registers while ancestry has London). So you would be best to have a look at both of those and see which covers the counties that you are most interested in. Also both ancestry and findmypast offer free trials, usually 14 days, so you could sign up for those and see which you like best. If you do, make sure to cancel in plenty of time if you decide not to go ahead and subscribe.
Also worth checking whether your local library offers free access to either or both of those sites (ancestry / Findmypast).
You can order any English or Welsh certificate from 1837 onwards from the GRO, so you don't have to visit register offices in person unless you want to. Also quite a few local register offices have their own websites now that you can use to order from.
If you have Scottish ancestors then search on FamilySearch first and use Scotland's People to view original records (you have to buy credits on there as there is no subscription system.)
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