Marketability is always best determined by end result. If you have equally marketed products and both supposedly doing the same job. At the end of the day with all products it will be the service and end result that determines the end winner and yes “There can only be one”.

I have both Headway and Thesis here is why we built our ministry blog on Headway.

When I ran into a problem being a newbie with Headway I heard directly back from Clay himself. When I ran into a problem with Thesis was told they would not help me and rather go into their support forums looking for an answer. Which I had already done and the answer was not there.

Winner Service from a newbie perspective: Headway

Now end result product

Headway even though it lists JQuery options in the Headway configuration panel seems to either not work or breaks the Visual Editor. Though I found the other night in their forums a wrap around in code. But for a non coding newbie that seems rather extreme.

Thesis users if non coding newbies are relegated to white themes as thesis does not do transparent pings. For example if you take the paypal code and place it on a Thesis theme directly it will show the grey background of the button. Place it on Headway and it’s transparent.

The Visual Editor in Headway is or can be broken by many plugins especially ajaz and jquery based. Having said that though it really is sweet to be able to change modify with leafs and the visual editor. For a newbie that really is a swick setup. Also being able to see changes live is swick.

Thesis really is limited in what a newbie coder can do and having to save move off page well not so swick.

With Thesis you must install a plugin to get hooks Headway already comes with hooks preloaded. Though there is more information for Thesis customizing than Headway and with the hooks Thesis can do nicely.

Thesis is easier on plugins, jquery, and ajax and coding errors. Having said that though there is still the issue of transparency. Which I have yet to find an answer for; and it is very maddening.

End Run Result for a Newbie

Headway

With a note if I could find an answer on the Thesis transparency issue I believe it would be tie. Nah, I take that back leaves and live visual editor really are hard to beat you know.

That is marketing and that is yet what I have really seen a post on yet.

End Result because if you cannot deliver in the end the fanciest, best developed marketing but if when the customer gets the product it really could go all down here from there.

Thanks for some wonderful comments from a newbie perspective was nice getting to see the men behind these tools and seeing they have standards of integrity.

Thanks
Pat

Competition definitely improves quality by bringing more creative solutions to the market for all to compare. Noting that Thesis took a new direction for 2.0 (causing delayed release), I wouldn’t be surprised if they were influenced by Frugal/Headway features in doing so.

I recently purchased the Thesis (developer option) but find I much prefer Frugal’s customization options, for example. I went with Thesis for several reasons, but chief among them was because a large active support community is so essential if you want to have a life AND dig deeper into customizations And because I respect the concerns of my clients, and building them around the market leader means their odds of finding help familiar with the design of their site increases for the future.

However, having said that, if updates or a new product brings a revolutionary experience and extreme ease of use, then I would not mind at all if prices went north.

As of this moment, I’m still sitting on a tripod, not sure if Thesis, Headway or Frugal gets a portion of my paycheck. All of them are great, great, great products.

Years of hard coding sets me up comfortably for Thesis, but Headway and Frugal’s does have features that gently nudges me about the greener grass on the other side.

In any case, Brian, Chris, Grant, Clay and Eric, I’d just like to point out that everyone (yes, I’m pretty sure EVERYONE) loves your work and everything that’s spawned off it. Great fellas, all of you are. Kudos.

in this case competition is better than collaboration..
at the end WP user will not only buy thesis but also headway and frugal.
thanks. jo.

First, let me just say that I enjoyed the post and its blunt tone. It’s refreshing to just hear what someone thinks without the sugar coating (something that can be hard to find in the blogosphere). So hats off to you for that.

I’ve really enjoyed getting in the game in ‘09 as I believe that WP themes are just getting started. Competition is what drives ‘industry’ and I’ve seen more innovation in the last 9 months than I’ve seen in the last 3 years of WP theme development.

With Sandbox creating a foundation for frameworks and a theme like Thesis bringing it to the mainstream, flexibility seems to have become the ‘hot item’ on the list of theme seekers.

I must admit, though, that Brian Gardner’s original Revolution series caught my eye before anything else. It seemed like his themes were the first to really make a WP theme look like a real-deal website.

Headway is pretty awesome too, so I have nothing but positive things to say about this bunch.

I don’t really know Grant, but I have tons of respect for him. When it comes to connecting with Headway guys, it’s really just Michael Martine, whom I’ve been friends with since well before Headway came out, who I talk with on a regular basis. We had an awesome time in Vegas (BWE09), by the way!

I met Brian Clark for the first time at Blog World. Once I got past the Paparazzi it was all good. Once again, lots of respect.

And yes, my marketing is not as strong as it should be. I’m a one-man-show at this point and end up spending most of my time in development and support. frugal has been more of a slow burn for me, but has also been the key to making a full time income online, so I’m not complaining.

Whether we look at the back and forth banter as a WAR or not, I just see some stiff competition and I’m enjoying the heck out of it. I see 2010 as being an amazing year for WP Themes. Not only will those already in the game become even more innovative, but I’m sure we’ll see some new faces as well.

My thought is that the closer we can get to offering a theme that combines both the flexibility of a framework with the ease of the ‘customized out of the box’ type of theme (like Studiopress, Woo Themes, Press71, iThemes, etc..) the closer we’ll be to offering what the masses want. I think that’s going to be what we see more of this year and less of the pure framework, pure pre-customized.

Anyway, those are just some of my thoughts and I appreciate the venue to share them. Eric