DanPickUp,
I have no idea about firetip.. But was happy with Ninja.
That can be configured to take datafeed from brokers trading platform directly. like Interactive broker etc.. You can infact place orders from Ninja platform that gets routed thru yr regular broker. You can obviously feed esignal type datafeed to NT platform.
I have account with AMP Futures broker which has margin of $ 500 for 1 ES contract.
They give free datafeed to ninja platform. If you want to use automated order placemnt, preset order templates etc, then u have to purchase ninja licence otherwise, basic buy/sell ordres can be placed with free downloaded version of ninja.
Chk out their site, where u will get lot of help about configuration.
It has pretty good system testing features as well.
Happy Trading