There are alternative solutions -- use a website building software to build a website by yourself, or by using ready made web templates.

So which option is more suitable for you?

Option 1: Website Building Software

Not everyone is a web designer. For experts who knows HTML well, they could build the whole site in Note Pad. But you might have a lot more other things to do beside just building the websites.

There are many software for quick website building available. Even if you don't know how to use, you might have heard of Dreamweaver, Flash, etc. However, unless you already have the skill and experience, you won't be able to use them without learn the coding and doing layout design by yourself. These are commercial software which usually costs several hundred dollars just to purchase.

An easy website builder or web page creator software can therefore be very helpful and save you lots of time. When choosing a website builder, ensure the website builder you use is a 'software' not a 'service'.

Many online website builder websites require you to pay a recurring monthly fee, and insist you must build your website by log in to their online service, and you cannot host your website anywhere else except theirs. You can never upload the website to another hosting company , or upload to your clients server. As soon as you cancel the plan, your entire website is gone including all your content and images.

It would be better to go with a website builder software which can be installed on your Windows desktop, so you and your staffs can all use it to build or edit websites any time, and upload to your own web hosting account.

Option 2: Use a website template

There are even more template websites than website builder software sites. Template sites provides all types of templates including HTML template, flash template, Joomla template, etc. Costs anything from FREE to $150, you can find thousands of templates on sites such as template.com, template monster, A4Flash, etc.

While it might be easy for you to add your own photos and text into the template, to fully customize the template is not an easy task. If you need to change the template layout, menu, text area size, left column width, add new pages and sections etc, you still need a commercial software such as Adobe Photo shop and Flash to do the work.

You also need some basic HTML knowledge to modify the template, for example, if you want to insert a banner ad on your site, or embed tracking code from Google Analytic, or optimize your website using meta tags.

There are website design firms you can hire or outsource to, that provide template customization at a reasonable cost.

If you decide to use a template, the total cost is not just the template. You must include the cost of template customization service. You should also estimate how often you would need to update the website, and the on going updating cost.

Before you choose your website builder or which website to buy your template from, you should have your website content including text, images, menu items organized and ready to use.

Have your website well planned first so that you know how to choose the suitable website builder or web template.

For example, if you want to build a website with menus and drop down sub-menus, then you would instantly filter out lots of website builder and templates, which do not have sub-menu support.

Website builder and web templates have become increasingly popular over the years. Using a website builder or web template can be a much simpler solution to build website than hiring a web designer. They can be great solution to basic web design needs (basic mean less than 50 pages of content and no database back end). However if you're going to need a website with features such as membership back end, newsletter, forum, e-commerce, then you still need a professional web development team to help you.