Playing with focus stacking software

I've been playing with two 'focus stacking' software programs to try to get better depth of field in the photos that I post here.

Here's a composite image I've made of Pauls Valley from 14 jpeg photos, using a free product called CombineZP:

This image was made using the same 14 photos, and a commercial product called Zerene Stacker, which sells for USD $89.00 (personal license):

Note that the CombineZP image was cropped slightly, compared to the Zerene image.(I did that - not the products themselves.)

Having compared the original output files, I have no doubt that Zerene does a better job. But if you're going to compress the images and upload them to the internet, is it worth the $89.00?