You're employer should be paying for your training. And you should be getting paid your regular wages while your at training. If he won't pay for it, then he doesn't realize that it's costing him more by not paying for the training.
I can't answer your question, but the AlphaCAM website does have a comparison chart.
We're currently shopping for a new machine, and were told that Advanced would be about $6000 more than Standard. Not sure if we were getting a better price on Standard with the machine?
I'm still using our 10 year old version 7.5, for mostly 2D work and nesting, until we get a new machine.