I am shopping for software that will perform basic slope stability analysis. Would like it to be user friendly and possibly have some initial tech support as I am learning to use it. Does anyone have a recommendation?
The links Okiryu mentioned are for the most popular commercial packages that are widely used in most of the geotechnical design offices.
There are, however, other alternatives for commercial software: FIDES GEO5 GEOSTRU OASYS GGU LIMITSTATE GEO GALENA
If you only need simple circular surfaces and no soil reinforcement, a simple spreadsheet based on the modified Bishop method could be enough. As an example, you can find my spreadsheet (still needing some additional work) in the following link: SlopeBishopVBA_v1.0.3
I much prefer UTEXAS to SLIDE and Slope/w. Not as user friendly, but very powerful and it is much better to alerting you to problems than Slope/w (been too long since I used SLIDE to comment there).
As for learning how to use them, once you get it installed; you will have to rely on the manuals.
Flac or FlacSlope would both do what you need; or Flac3D and just fix your out of plane direction (Flac3D comes with a HUGE learning curve)
UDEC could be used for rock slopes.
FlacSlope is probably what you are looking for, unless you want to have a multi-purpose software package.
Not all slope stability software is real expensive. Depends on what you want to do with it.
ReSSA by Adama Software (US$1150)
G-Slope by Mitre Software (US$1250)
Geo5 by Fine Software (US$750)
Geo-Tec B by Interstudio (US$500)
New one I just found, MacSlope, for Mac and iPad ($700)
You can sometimes find free versions of older software such as ReSSA 1.0, UTexas2 or Stable. Some software have different demo or rental versions that can help learn the software at minimal expense.
As a new business, I can't afford Slide 7.0 or Slope/W yet, which I have used previously along with Utexas2 and 3. I lost my free copy of PCSTABL6 and Purdue no longer issues them (I contacted them). Anybody have a copy of that program that I could use?