Not all that long ago it took a professional web designer and development team to design, program, and implement a website. Prices were expensive and not guaranteed. They needed to be experts in graphics and manipulation, FTP software, C Panels, and search engine technology, even though it was in its infancy. Fast forward to the 21st century, and we find there is more than one easy way to make a website for free.

All the programming that needed high level professionals less than twenty years ago can be accomplished through means totally unheard of way back when. Programs and code have been written to do what the program and the code only touched on in the early 1990s.

And so came the template based websites. Accepted by everyone and used by even large companies, everyone could build a website without knowing HTML, CGI or any other type of code. Template sites became even more robust and not only included the ability to write and build pages and add links, many template sites provided valuable add-ons such as a large selections of headers and graphics, mailing list generation, autoresponders, news feeds, and the ability to design the site to your own specifications. All this for free.

Companies that allow you to build free websites are easy to find. Anyone familiar with Microsoft and Windows Live has probably taken advantage of building their website there for free (for one year). You have a choice of whether you want to buy your own domain name, or have a free URL which would include not only your company, but theirs as well. Depending on why you have a website should help you decide if you want to pay for a domain name. If you are a babysitter, or you simply want to be able to share family activities with others who live far away, you probably don’t need the added expense of having your own domain.

The only difference would be this: www.yourwebistecompany.herearemynewpix.com OR www.herearemynewpix.com. Getting your own domain can be as little as $6. 95 a year.

Another option that many are taking advantage of in order to stop paying what have become some very expensive monthly upkeep fees, is to use a free blogging site. Certain sites are completely customizable and you still have the opportunity to get your own URL/domain name. In other words, the fact that you are using a blog for your website is totally transparent to your customers.

If this doesn’t interest you, you can still search online for free web templates, build your site for free, and then pay a few dollars a month to have your site hosted somewhere.

Free doesn’t necessarily mean “cheap” or unattractive. There are some superb websites out there that were done using free services they found online. Not just tiny companies, but companies that do business nationally or even internationally. Business owners have finally realized that there is no need to spend hundreds of dollars a month to have someone on call to update their site on a regular basis. They do it themselves, for free, using user friendly template services. Why pay for something when you get it for free?

Dhruv Patel is a customer of DreamHost. He has created site to help new DreamHost customers and to promote DreamHost by giving DreamHost coupon. You can also find detailed DreamHost review there.