No reason to get defensive, I assumed you had not tried StarTools' wipe, otherwise I am sure you would have mentioned it - it is equivalent. And, no, I don't expect you to try every software out there, it was not an accusation, just trying to be helpful
As I said, my personal experience was: Trying PI... interesting... DBE... wow! Then trying StarTools... interesting... Wipe... wait, it did it with just one click? -> back to DBE to compare... yes, same result. So it is not about "better", it is about giving me the same result with one click for 90% of the cases, while with DBE I did a bit of setup. In the other 10% of the cases, Wipe also has to be assisted (masks), although still probably faster to do than DBE depending on the case. Overall, I can't claim StarTools will give you a better result - I didn't get that advanced in PI during trial to be able to say that, but after trying both (actually spending a bit more time with PI since it is less straightforward), I could get a similar result in about 10 mins (with ST) instead of 1 hour+ (with PI). And I loved the fact that most modules of StarTools are not destructive on your data you can go back and forth, apply as many stretches as you want etc, so I personally find it more pleasant to work with. Now, if you want things like batch processing etc, you can't use StarTools, so, again, that is my experience as a relative beginner. I posted a link to my tutorial if you are curious (I selected an example where wipe needs a little help), there are also many videos on youtube to get an idea. It is interesting to see once in action, just because it does not look like any other program...
I would want to keep PI for calibration/stacking, but it felt too expensive for just that - I already have Photoshop if I want a little tweak after StarTools - so I had to go back to the rather temperamental DSS