When I was starting my business I had very little capital to start with, lets say I had no capital to start with all I had was time at my disposal. In fact I was not looking to start a business, my first two ideas had failed miserably I had resigned to the fact that I needed to look for a job quickly. It was while I was looking for a job that I offered to give my services in ICT for free to a friend who was in need. When I was done she asked me I had ever thought of offering ICT services to small businesses and I answered never. I was stuck in my own head and had assumed that everyone in a small business at least had the necessary IT skills needed to run it. So she asked me to give it a shot and reluctantly I did and then six months later I had raked in some cash however because I was at zero most of it was just reinvested in getting the basic like a computer, internet services, web hosting space and to pay contracted labour from time to time. I soon realized I need a website for my company too and I toyed with idea of a free website. I scanned many themes, templates and systems that were available for free but none seamed to provide me uniqueness I needed to standout I thus had to fork out some cash to get another designed to see what I needed and then produce a template which I could then populate with content. From then on each year I have continued to change the look and feel and content as the company changed in from and size.
Today I strongly believe in a balance between aesthetic qualities on a website and functionality, what is the use of have a an exceptionally beautiful website with no traffic or the worst looking site with tons of traffic that bounces off to soon because they cannot relate to it. It would be great to get the best of both worlds beauty and function but if not then a balance of both would be right.
Still wondering weather to have a free website or not your guess is as good as mine if free do not expect anything much out of it.