Try it before you buy it.

I know, its easier to sit in your tighty whitey's and type at a
computer, but most real welding supply stores will actually let you
try out a plasma cutter.

And with stainless, its a good idea to see what you will get.

Because of the alloy content of stainless, its a lot harder to get a
perfect, slag free edge on it with an off the rack plasma cutter.
The machine cuts stainless just fine- but it leaves a dark gray
oxidized slag on the back that is sometimes very hard to grind off.
For simple shapes, notches, and large radius curves, this is not a big
problem- you hit it with a grinder, and then touch it up with a flap
disc of alumina zirconia, and it cleans up. But it does take some time
to do this.

However, if you are doing complicated shapes, with multiple interior
cutouts, expect to do some time with a die grinder, with expensive
carbide burrs.

In industry, they get around this by using Hi-Definition Plaama units
(these start at $10,000) and then, instead of shop compressed air,
they use an inert gas like argon, or at least a no oxygen gas like
nitrogen. Expensive, in other words.
Or, they use a laser or waterjet. Again, intial setup costs of
$100,000 to a quarter million.

So given your budget, its probably gonna be hand held plasma.
I would not buy anything but Hypertherm or Plasma Dynamics.

But like I said, go to a welding supply store with your own sample
material in hand, and cut a few pieces, and see for yourself what you
get, and how hard it is to clean it up.

Might be, you decide instead to scour ebay til you find a killer deal
on a big 36" Do-all bandsaw.