WordPress hosting company WP Engine publishes a very interesting online magazine called Torque. Back in January, they wrote an article about whether you can create a website for free:
Can You Create a Functional (and Effective) Website Without Spending a Dollar?
I reached the same conclusions they did. I spend money on web hosting with Siteground, and on domain name registration with namecheap, but use the free Weaver Xtreme theme, free plugins, free CDN services from Cloudflare and free SSL from Let’s Encrypt. This seems to be a reasonable balance to me.
