Business Websites...

If it's a really simple site you need, ie one pager then people will do this for very small amounts on gig websites, I've seen people willing to do this for a fiver. Obviously have a look at their work before going ahead, check ongoing costs, who owns the site, hosting etc.

There are web sites and there are web sites. Do you want a single contact page so that people can find you, or are you selling on-line or publishing regular content - or one of many other formats of site. It also depends on your own personal competence and confidence with such issues. Each business will have a unique set of circumstances, so there's no one simple answer.

I sell on-line and have a blog and gallery areas too. I'm reasonably confident in tinkering, so have done much of the work myself. I have a shopping cart for which I used one of the pre-made carts (free through my web host). As I recently upgraded to a new version and my site had got quite large, I did pay for the developer to migrate it over and make some mods I wanted and did the rest of the styling work myself, based on a free skin and the addition of several free and commercial mods.

It's been a lot of work, but I actually enjoy doing it (I did web design commercially in the early days when it was much simpler, so I've comfortable with HTML, style sheets and tweaking code a little), plus I don't have the funds to pay a professional for more than the minimal I couldn't do myself.

As others have mentioned, I've done sites for clients that want to update their own content, using Wordpress with a unique skin for their corporate look. For simple 'what we do and where to find us' business sites, it's a very easy format to work with and there are lots of add-ons for functionality like contact forms, maps etc. I don't have any experience of any of the site builder packages.

If you decide wordpress then themeforest is good option for looking out for perfect theme and later you can decide on hosting part.