It’s true that there are many other frameworks out there, many of which are quite solid and offer a great value as well. I think the key to standing out in this crowded WP theme marketplace, though, is to provide the full package and be sure to pick a demographic and cater to it well.
I’ve been developing both free and premium themes and plugins for almost a decade now and so I bring a lot of experience to the table. I know what makes a rock solid framework design and in the case of freelance developers, how to offer it in such a way as to most effectively boost their productivity and capability. I’ve been seeing much more robust DIY WP tools out there, with drag-n-drop page builders and point-n-click design aids, which has brought more and more of the masses into this freelance dev community. This is great as a whole, but it also means greater competition for fellow freelancers. So to me the best way to stand out in this particular demographic is to improve your core development skills, not simply get better at activating Page Builders and dragging boxes around the screen.
And let me be clear, I have nothing against page builders. I made sure to make Freelancer fully compatible with Page Builder Plugins as I know they’re not only popular these days, but can be quite useful under the right circumstances. But they can also become a crutch, and a means by which to dumb down your drive to keep honing your dev skills and have more to offer your next potential big client. So Freelancer is not about ditching the page builders, but about re-igniting the freelancer’s drive to become a better overall web developer, by providing not only the tools, but the resources and community to help along the way.
So I can say for certain that just like any other theme out there, Freelancer is not for everyone. But something unique to Freelancer when compared to many of those other frameworks out there, is that it is very much for a specific group of WordPress users, and I’m confident you can guess who those might be. 😉
