By now you've probably seen the ads for a "free" website. A new website - totally "free". It sounds like an incredible deal; until you read the fine print. What they don't tell you in the commercials is that you have to pay a monthly fee for that "free" site. In the end, the amount you'd pay yearly for that "free" site may just be what you'd pay an independent web designer for a custom site. The difference? When your project is done by an independent designer, you actually own your site and have full control over it. The "free" services maintain ownership of your site, not you.
This an extremely important point - with the "free" services, you only have access to the site if you keep paying them. Once you decide you don't want to pay for your "free" site anymore, they take it down. You don't get to keep it or any of the content (text, graphics, images, blog, domain name) or applications in it.
In web design, you get what you pay for. Make sure you read the fine print before running to sign up for something that sounds too good to be true; it probably is.
