I used soft-sided crate for Bacca and loved it. Granted, he was pretty good and never really tried to get out of it, but neither was he ever in it for great periods of time. During the day, the longest was 3-4 hours.
I just loved how I could move it around the house and in and out of car and over to the cottage.....no heavy lifting. Mine was actually quite small in hindsight....only about 24" but I only used it until he was about a year old.
Once he was potty trained, but yet to be fully house trained, I moved the crate into an xpen. Still had his den, but just a little bit more room to move around and get at water, etc. Worked beautifully!