I'm always reaching for the Sonitus Compressor. To me, it does the job and the interface is easily understood. Plus it has external side-chaining ability, which is pretty sweet considering it may have been developed in 1998. I've used the Sonitus Gate as a noise-gate, but wasn't impressed with it. The Blue Tubes gate performed much better in that respect. I should try the Sonitus Gate with an external sidechain. That could be fun. For that purpose, I use Izotope Alloy 2.