I always loved this line from the Free Software Foundation's The Free Software Definition:

"Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of "free" as in "free speech," not as in "free beer."

Now I have had plenty of free beer in my wanton youth and it was truly a fine thing; however that doesn't compete with "free speech" and "liberty"!

For small and medium sized business owners, community organizations, and individuals freedom in software is important. It means not only that you will never be forced to pay for expensive licenses and upgrades, but also that you will never be held hostage by a web service provider. With free software you are able to use any developer and any web hosting company you choose.

Business owners do not need to worry about restrictions- free does not mean non-commercial. Truly free software can be used for any purpose provided that the use does not restrict the freedom of others. And of course free software can be sold and providers of the software can charge for their services - we all need to make an honest living!

If you are making a choice among providers and if you want to stay "free" a great choice would be to build your web site on the LAMP stack - meaning Linux as the operating system, Apache as the web server, PHP as the server side scripting language, and MySQL as the database system. Those are the basics - there are other options and I do not mean to discriminate, I just want to keep things simple.

Typically you will find these software platforms bundled together by web service providers as "Linux hosting". By the way it is important to know that this software resides on your web server and is completely independent of the type of computer hardware and software that your web site's visitors use. Your web developer will be able to build a web site that will be equally useful to people who use Windows PCs, Apple Mac, Linux, or mobile devices.

If you go this way you have the benefit of using some great platforms like Drupal or Wordpress, you can change the software in any way you want any time you want, and you are never locked into a particular developer or service provider.