In my and my partners expirience it is better to start our with a crop. They are easier to control the amount of pain and area it is meant for. We actually started with the Impressions crop, and are thinking about moving up to a tickler/ flogger combo, to get more of the feel for how your body reacts to being smacked. Also maybe try other things like ticklers, they can be used with te impressions crop to lightly pass over where you were hit to add new sensations.

I hope this helped, and if you need anything let me know and I will do my best to help you.

Depends on what you are going for. Floggers tend to be more thuddy depending on several factors like cut, width, material, etc, and crops more stingy. They are very different sensations and I would say a better comparison would be Crops vs Canes, in which Crops would be less evil but still pack a punch. Floggers are generally a bit more work to get down right but its really hard to mess up a Crop, just make sure you hit the meaty parts of their butt and thighs.
Personally for me, I started with floggers because I didn't feel like inflicting a lot of pain, but I feel that both are useful toys in my bag.

I started right out with narrow crops, but I really enjoy stingy rather than thuddy pain, and all concentrated in one spot. It's easier to target where you're hitting (and easier to get the hang of the movement of hitting, for me as a top) with a crop, but there are multiple choices of material for the tails of a flogger, some of which have different or softer sensations, while crops are fairly standardized, in my experience.

Flogger are practically safe with any force of influence. Thus, the psychological effect of using a flogger is combined with a fairly weak impact and low soreness. So flogger can be the gentlest tool for the first time. I think, real leather flogger link can be the best option for such games