Losing patience

This is ridiculous! if it's not one thing, it's something else. So I get Dreamweaver (on trial, obviously - I'm not forking out for something like that!) and think 'right. this is a big posh programme - if people are prepared to pay £300 for this, it's gonna work.'
so a few hours later - I have a reasonably presentable homepage to do a test-upload on....

ftp connects to server... all good

but then it doesn't upload the pictures.

so I email the place I was using as my host, asking what's going on - www.freewebsites.com <- incidentally. Don't use it.

I do get a reply fairly speedily

but the reply is a failed delivery notice, that the help centre thing does not exist.

Fantastic.

I feel like I'm being pushed into buying a domain name and a host space which I really don't want to have to do - I'm not wanting to make any money off this - it's not a business - why the hell should I pay for something like that? I'm quite happy having ad supported things - all I want.. ALL I want is some space with ftp that I can upload a gallery to - I'm not asking for blood. Why is this so impossible?