A free website builder costs you nothing for the software and quite a lot in three other places: your own domain name, email on that domain, and photographs good enough for the template you picked.

The photo problem is the one that catches everybody. A template looks superb because it is filled with professional images of somebody else’s business, lit and framed a particular way. Drop your phone pictures in and the design falls apart, because it was built around photographs you do not have.

Then there is the time. Two weekends is the honest average for a first site, and that is before the afternoon in month three when the contact form quietly stops delivering and you find out by accident. Free is a fair trade if you have more time than money. Go in knowing which you are spending.