I had a helix for awhile and felt it was really good. I think the AxeFX is better, but significantly more expensive. My current favorite that I am using on my board is a Tonex pedal with Amalgam amp+cab captures. $399 and then about $15-$20 per amp you want to buy a capture for from Amalgam. That is significantly cheaper than the Helix and AxeFX but it's pretty much just amp and cab simulation. There are free captures and a community sharing service, but that's a very mixed bag in terms of quality. The interface on the pedal is good, the app used to find and load captures onto the pedal are a weak spot. More of a pain in the ass to navigate, search, manage than it needs to be. I'm currently using a capture of a Dr Z AC80 and it sounds and responds really well. Below is a video demo of it with good sound quality from the amalgam site.
https://video.wixstatic.com/video/a319e2_0dbde6e3b2a14a83944933d8e8808554/1080p/mp4/file.mp4
As alluded to, it's not a full rig pedalboard emulator like the helix or axefx, though. You have amp and cab, and a noise gate, compressor and a meh reverb but nothing else. So it's more of an amp-in-a-pedal thing where you build a traditional pedalboard around it vs an all in one solution. The current state of my board with the tonex serving as my amp/cab and the chain going guitar -> ultraviolet -> D&M drive -> Tonex -> Deco. Everything to this point is mono. Fro. there its stereo. Deco -> Terraform (modulation) -> Nemesis (delay) -> Ventris (reverb) -> Infinity 2 looper. It sounds so good hearing everything in stereo. It's very easy to gig or record with. Live, I just take my pedalboard and plug into PA. Recording, I just go stereo out to an interface. I don't have to deal with issues with non-deterministic mic placement or phasing or a bad room or whatever. Its the sweet spot for me and what I'm doing.
What's an amp, a pedal, hardware and software is all getting very blurry. I don