i have done both it really depends on your set up and what you want to do? if you have plenty of room and time do soil let your plants get older and use 5 gallon buckets..if your room is small and you want to do small plant as fast and best you can go with perlite..you can do a 2 ft plant in 2 gallons of perlite 3 ft with 3 gallon buckets and so on..i think the soil is easier unless you have ph and ppm meters becouse the soil is more forgiving.the perlite needs hydro nutes and ph of 5.8-6.0. i'm around if you have any more??'s