I also have some concerns about ABA and think those are worth listening to. On the other hand, the discussion has become very emotive and polarised which doesn't help anybody. In the end, we all use behaviourism every day (in fact, when I've finished my current task I will treat myself to a coffee) - but in my view it is possible to do damage with ABA if you are not careful. In particular, you have to be careful about anything that might teach your child to ignore their sensory needs (e.g. suppressing stims, or "sitting nicely" - better to try to figure out why they need to stim or fidget and try to find ways they can meet those needs AND learn at the same time), or to ignore their own judgement as they get older (e.g. if the teaching is focused on compliance, they may later instinctively comply with adults who do not have their best interests at heart). Even if you do plan to use ABA, it's worth reading the criticisms as it will give you some useful insights into what to avoid and be careful of. Like any unregulated industry it will attract a lot of cranks and charlatans with little interest in your child's wellbeing, but also some great people who want to help your child so it's worth being careful and being as knowledgeable as possible about the dangers, as with any other time you put your child into the care of strangers.
So, coming back to your question, we did use some distance ABA (i.e. the therapists just spoke to us as parents but did not work with our daughter directly). We did it with a company called Beam, and found them good - so if you want something not too intensive but to give you a guide it may be worth getting in touch. We found it helpful at the time, as we felt completely unsupported from other sources (we were basically just put on a 2 yr wait list for a parenting course, and some limited SLT which didn't get us very far at all). It did give us some good ideas of things we could do to support DD - much of which was not really "ABA", but it was the ABA therapist who taught us those methods (backward chaining, now and next, modelling, feelings diaries, etc.) so I don't regret doing it, despite my misgivings about ABA more generally, particularly given the lack of alternative support.
At the same time, in our case it would have been a mistake to spend hours doing ABA at the expense of time at nursery. I think DD got so much from nursery, and the teachers there were brilliant at engaging her and scaffolding her in starting to learn to interact with the other children. Just sitting with an adult doing repetitive exercises all day could not possibly have done her as much good I don't think.
Some of the best specialist support we got in the end was also found through nursery: they found a really good SLT (much better than the one we saw through the LA) and also got a nanny with special needs experience to come in and help DD play with the other kids at break time or lunchtime once or twice a week in her Reception year (with the nursery TAs playing that role when she was still at nursery). It just helped her make those first steps to interaction, and then from there she could pretty much learn from observing, practicing and just from playing.
As for differences between SALT and ABA, I think it depends entirely on your therapist in each case. Our most "ABA-like" experience was actually not with the ABA therapist but with the LA SALT, who wanted to do constant "sabotage" games (making things impossible to reach or open so DD would be forced to ask for help, and not accepting non-verbal requests as meaningful/acceptable ways to get help, etc. - it was really depressing). By contrast our ABA therapists never suggested anything like that (but on the other hand we were probably already quite clear up front that this kind of intervention was not acceptable to us!)