Free Web Page hosting and design

Half of all small companies do not have a website, according to one statistic. With that in mind, we believe there are many readers who may need some help getting a simple website up and running. Even if you have a company website, you may know someone who needs one. Here are 7 do-it-yourself website building services to consider.

There are all sorts of tools and applications out there, but our main selection criteria in this post is whether the tool lets you build a site, for free, in less than an hour and publish it to create at least a basic presence online. Are these tools all robust enough to create the site of your dreams? No. Will they allow you to cease procrastinating and put a stake in the online ground? Absolutely. They also give you the capacity to start using many of the great tools that Lisa Barone shares here on Small Business Trends, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Places and more.

In many cases, these site builders will not allow you to have your own custom domain name. Since that is important to many, including me, I have one favorite suggestion I’ll share at the end of the post as #7. Note: There are many website hosting companies that offer a free domain name, but that is not the same as a free website and hosting. This list is about free online website builders that include hosting.

1. Google Sites

I’m a big Google fan, and they don’t disappoint with their free website options. Google Sites is robust and probably a bit more technical than the busy small business owner wants to engage in. It does, however, allow really granular changes. I have tried it out on several projects, and it offers a full WYSIWYG editor.

Like many Google offerings, not everything is super-intuitive or easy to find. For example, I created this