If Free Websites Are Available, What Are The Benefits To Paying For Web Hosting?

Domain names usually. Free sites will let you use something like "yourname.freesite.com" for example. Hosting sites let's you register (or xfer) your own domain "yourname.com".  (Free sites usually let you do that, too). You can usually get a ton of other services for extra money that you don't get with free sites, i.e., dedicated servers, disk space, extra domains, etc. If you're a serious company, you most certainly have to be hosted. These are all just generalizations since there are exceptions to every rule.