I've often been asked by my clients; "How can I quickly create my own website for free?" I've used Blogger and Wordpress myself, but I have been amazed by how many new services have emerged. So I decided to do an evaluation of the best free blogging service in March 2010. I narrowed the list down to three top contenders:

1. Wordpress
2. Weebly
3. Tumblr

Watch the video to right to get an idea of how easy these three are to set up.

The dashboard is usually the first page you come to when you sign into your blog and it's  where you customize it and post new content. Here's how Wordpress, Weebly and Tumblr stacked up:

Watch the video.

The hardest part of the process of making a website using any of these three services is getting it to look like what you envisioned. Customization of a website is not easy for a novice, but if you're not picky then chances are you can at least create something that looks decent with any of these three. If you're having a programmer or designer customize your site then there is a big difference in what is possible while still remaining in the "free" category.  Watch the video below to see what I mean:

Adding content and making updates.  So now you've got your free website set up, you're familiar with the dashboard, and you've got it customized to look like what you envisioned. Now comes the day to day work of filling it with text, images, links, widgets, and the like. Which is easiest? Which offers the most possibilities? Watch the video below to find out:

So here's the wrap up, I've spent over a week with each of these three free web services and I have to say overall, they are all amazing. They are all easy enough for a novice to figure out, and allow a huge range of easy choices for making updates and adding content over time. But each one has it's advantages, and best uses.

Wordpress is the best option if you are a non-programmer and plan to do it all yourself. It's rock solid, and in many ways very easy to figure out. I've seen programmers who are familiar with Wordpress churn out amazingly customized websites with the huge amount of widgets available but for the average person, it's hard, and costly to customize the way you can with the other two options.

Weebly is in a class by itself in many ways since it allows you to build a true website, and not just a blog, but it's drag a drop interface can be confusing and frustrating for some. It however offers a lot of customization options if you are a programmer or going to use one to customize your site.

Tumblr offers a good mix with extreme ease of use for novices along with easy customization options for programmers or designers looking at it for the first time. Tumblr's balance between these two important aspects are what make me recommend it as the best solution in most instances. If you want a more complete site, go with Weebly, and if you want to do it all yourself as a novice Wordpress might be a good choice, but Tumblr is easier to use that  Wordpress in my opinion and while not doing everything that Weebly does, gets close.