I think its trade-off - You sacrifice certain advanced facilities for dead-simple editing with a product like Surreal. This is because it doesn’t use a template as such - you’re actually editing the content in the web pages. Of course, if you were the super administrator, you would have the ability to edit everything, including source code, CSS and JS. However, your clients would normally be restricted to just editing pictures or text content. For many clients, that’s all they really want.
I have a number of clients who absolutely love the simplicity. In many cases, all we do is design a Blocs site loaded with dummy content and leave the client to add all the text and images themselves. And at a cost of about $10 per month for up to 5 websites, Surreal is good value for money.
Of course, if you have clients who don’t mind the added complexity of a templated solution such as October or Pulse, then you would offer them those options. But, for the average small site owner, Surreal is just perfect.