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Affordable Templates

Websites, Presentations, Newsletters, Images, Logos

Template Monster
This website is very well-known. It offers a good collection of professional looking website templates at good prices. Some of them are too "rich" in colors and layout, but some are very good. The only problem is that they have a huge network of resellers and virtually every company offering website templates through Google and other search engines (except the ones listed below in this section) is using their library. So your best option is to make a 'unique' purchase of a template, in which case the price jumps from $70-ish to $2000-ish. However, if your budget permits, we recommend doing so, if you would like to have a good looking site to be up and running quickly. Alternatively, you can buy a template and then customize it to make it different (we recommend not using too much Flash unless you are in the Entertainment or similar type of industry). At the very least, you can use their color schemes to provide examples and guidance to your graphic designers.

The Template Store
This site offers simple customizable templates starting from $20 Canadian. Some of their Flash templates are very nice, ideally suited for small businesses and independent consultants. The site also sells good corporate identity items, such as logos, business card templates, and letterheads. The templates are very easy to modify and enhance. You need to know only the very basics of such web publishing programs as Dreamweaver or FrontPage (for simple modifications, they are very similar to Word or PowerPoint).

Template Central
Apart from website templates, they offer logos, PowerPoint presentation templates, images, Word templates, etc. We find that their logos are overpriced for the type of models presented and their buttons are very old-fashioned. But overall, they nonetheless offer a great collection of templates, which you can download and customize either yourself or with the help of a graphic designer. You can also order a customized template from them for under $500 Canadian, but be prepared to be very patient and pay a top price for every stroke they make on a keyboard.

Stock Layouts
This website offers a decent collection of Newsletter, Brochure and Flyer templates made for print for under $200 Canadian. The desktop versions are all under $20. Once again, change a couple of colors by using a color palette, replace one or two images, copy and paste your own content - and you have a professional newsletter, brochure or flyer ready.

Smarter Templates
This website offers a wide range of templates, from business cards to newsletters to logos to websites, and more - all for a one time fee under $70 Canadian. We found their website template collection to be decent, although somewhat too rich in color and design layout, for our taste. A few of their Outlook templates look very professional. We also liked their brochures. We were not impressed with their logos and corporate identity templates. Overall, access to all their categories for a small one-time fee is undoubtedly a great value.

iStock Photo: Stock Photos and Images
This website offers a rich collection of stock photography. Some of the images are ready to be used, while others may require a bit of customization work. If you know Fireworks, Photoshop or even Paint at a basic level, you can already enhance and customize all of your web and marketing materials quite easily. Alternatively, supplying the required images to your graphic designer and giving them specific instructions on how you'd like the images to be modified (adding shading, color transition, oval borders or other enhancements) should also help you cut costs.

Getty Images: High Quality Photos and Images
One of the largest providers of imagery, photography, and other graphic components and related services. But keep in mind: everyone uses this resource!

Flickr
One of the largest social networking sites on the net specializing in photos and images. Free to upload, free to share, free to download.

Images & Photography Portals:

These portals are less known that iStockPhoto and Getty Images, so you have fewer chances of stumbling upon another website with your top image. In our view, quality, creativity and presentation are also higher at these portals. Prices range from $50 to $1550. To cut costs, search "royalty free" images and photos only.

Website Templates based on Joomla - NEW!

Below is a list of design agencies who supply quality templates based on Joomla (one of the most popular FREE content management systems). Select the template you like and order customization. This way, you can get a $15K site for a few hundred dollars.

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