Hardware wallets are way more secure than software wallets, even if it's Electrum. Software wallets are only as secure as the environment they run on. Hardware wallets usually have physical buttons where pressing can't be "faked" and they offer a secure environment where the keys are stored and the transaction signing takes place.

On the other hand you could look into Electrum's Coldstorage feature where you basically have two devices that run Electrum. One is used for watching the wallet, the other one for managing the keys and signing the transactions. I highly recommend looking into it if you want to use Electrum without a hardware wallet.

As a whole make sure you only use open source wallets. Because you never know what closed source wallets do under the hood.