Well, vakaxa is very new in the market and I haven't heard more of it. By studying further I didn't get any fine review or user experience to anticipate it to be good or bad. Waiting for talks that can enlighten us more...

Yes, hardware wallets are more secure to cover your assets. They have many advantages than software wallets such as it never needs to be touched, open source soft, immune to computer viruses which steals from softs, cannot be transferred in plain text etc. Researching for best wallets I found Ledger nano s, keep keys, Trezor etc in the list.

Yes you got the great thing. By using this bitcoin transaction become so easy and comfortable. Sometimes i face some weird things but can be ignored. In a word i can say you can consider this is an exchanger.