A free mini site

A professional custom website will cost you about half of what you spent on your last new car. Anywhere between $7,5oo and $30,000, depending on features (just like a car).

I’m assuming you want something clean and elegant, like this, with custom graphics and a logo, maybe an integrated blog, some social media add-ons, and the ability to update the site yourself without knowing any code. And perhaps some ecommerce (that’s a major feature, by the way).

If you can’t afford that yet, consider trying one of the better DIY sites, like weebly.com. They offer enough options to build you a small, basic, clean-looking site. Moreover, their platform is built for websites, not for blogs, which means that your site will actually look like a website, with multiple pages, as opposed to a single giant scrolling page.  Like WordPress, it’s free. (I’ll get to the strings attached in a minute, but they’re minimal). You can even add PayPal buttons or a simple PayPal shopping cart (seedemo video). Or a photo gallery. And audio/video for Pro level ($5/month). And they guarantee it will display well on all mobile devices.

I tested it out, and now highly recommend it for micro-businesses or small organizations with a limited budget (sewing groups, book clubs, neighborhood watch, etc).

The pre-designed themes are simple, but you can have a webdesigner alter these at a later date. Keep in mind you can always change the photos. The only drawbacks I could find were:

a) it’s for small, basic sites only
b) Limited navigation & design
c) No databases
d) one or 2 column layouts only (which is fine for 95% of sites)
e) limited choice of fonts
f) there’s a credit link at the foot of each page to weebly, small or large depending on the template you choose. (You can delete it if you go Pro, for $5/month)

If you can live within that, it’s an amazing deal, especially for a freelancer or small organization. Even the hosting is free! But if you really want to host it elsewhere, you can design your site at weebly.com and then download the code as a zip file and upload it to another webhost‘s server.

How can all this be free? No doubt the creators are pitching it to Google, etc in the hopes of getting rich. You, in the meantime, have nothing to lose.

When you’re ready to expand or upgrade, or you need a more distinctive look, we’ll be here.