Well, you get what you pay for. My chapter used a volunteer-run hosting organization for a few years. They did the initial HTML implementation and provided hosting for a while. And then our web site was down for five months when they redid their servers. I registered a domain, set up the site elsewhere, and asked them to redirect requests on their server to our new site. I think it took nine months and several emails to get that to happen. As somebody with a bunch of sites, I can pretty easily justify the cost of powerful hosting, but I think you'll be surprised just how cheap hosting can be. Check the prices at:
I've either used or had a friend who used each of these. This site and five others are hosted on a pair Webmaster account. I think Harmonize.ws used to offer free hosting, but now Garcia Dev is offering a reasonably priced package for barbershop sites.
Most free hosting companies won't let you have your own domain. Domains are cheap, and they're a great way to keep your site portable. You can move from hosting company to hosting company without having to notify the whole world of your new address. As someone who's had to do it WAY too many times, let me tell you, it's a monumental pain. You don't ever want to have to notify the world of a web address change. Ever.
Most paid hosting companies also give you something very spiffy: log access. Web servers keep track of every page visited, by what computer, and when. Forget dinky counters when you can be looking at whole-site summaries of your traffic. The hosting companies above all provide access to the logs, and some even automatically generate reports for you.
Whatever you do, don't go for advertising-sponsored. The third-party advertising dilutes your message and interferes with your audience's experience of your site. Worse, since you can't control what kinds of ads will be shown, your site may appear with ads that are the complete opposite of the image you want to project.
These sites appear to offer no-hitch free sites for barbershoppers, although they don't really explain their terms very clearly. I know intuitively that they are good people with the best intentions, so be careful not to impose on their time too much with support questions! Please let me know if there are other sites that are kind to barbershoppers in this way.