Hi,
That is correct, see also: https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/Shared-VMs-are-back-in-Workstation-16-1/td-p/2811423
Even if it doesn't come back, I have a product for that (Vimarun, you can find it via the link in my footer) written in Delphi of course 😉 .
It does not only take care of auto start, but also auto suspends your VM(s) on shutdown.
As for what product to use...
Don't really ask me as I'm a long time VMware user that even has a few VMware related products and is an active user moderator at their forums.
VMware Workstation / Fusion / Player and vSphere have always worked very well for me.
However I strongly believe that you should use what works for you.
Hyper-V, Virtualbox, KVM, Parallels etc.. are all very mature as well.