Ardupilot is really cool, and a lot of people use Mission Planner with it. What do people think of Mission Planner, and are there any other software options people enjoy using?
https://ardupilot.org/planner/ - the website seems down right now though.
Mission Planner is an alright GCS but awful for configuration. Use this instead https://github.com/ArduPilot/MethodicConfigurator.
And if you're looking for other ground controls, you could try out QGroundControl or Mavproxy (terminal based).
This is neat! It seems like it could help with set up speed generally and also simplicity for beginners