The thing about free hosting and free auto responders is, you will likely have to put up with a lot of advertising (not your own) put there by the host. This is also why I don't believe in banner exchanges. You are working hard enough to get folks to your business, and just getting them there is only part of the work. There is a well known axiom of Internet Marketing that says over 95% of your visitors will NEVER buy anything from your website on their first visit. It often takes not 4, not 5 but SEVEN exposures before they make their purchase. This goes for E-mail campaigns as well. You must follow up!
(What a pain!) Yes, this is a lot more difficult than it sounds.
For one thing, you must not SPAM, and even if you have legitimate leads, you must
observe net etiquette, and allow them to opt-out from your mailings.
This is where an autoresponder will meet the needs, as one of the essential tools of Internet Marketing.
As far as making your own web-pages goes, there are again, several ways you can do that. If you know HTML, you can use any number of programs.
But you don't have to know HTML, to make your own web-pages. Many hosting services provide templates you can use to easily create your own. To be fair, your own ISP probably offers such a service.
Having your own domain name makes it easier for people to remember the address of your site and also enables search engines to pick it up more effectively.
If you are involved with affiliate marketing, it's a good idea to get your own domain and set-up your own website, rather than just rely on the affiliate web pages that you get with the program you've signed-up for. Here's why;
Your affiliate URL looks something like this;
www. The_Name_of_the_Company/referrer=yourID#
The part at the end, after the / is you. This last part is how your company tracks sales that you have made and guess what? If you advertise, nine times out of ten, anyone seeing your ad will just go to a search engine and type in the company name, leaving off the last part which is the important part to you. Then you've just lost a sale and are out advertising expenses. Many search engines will also not accept these long affiliate URLs, or, again, will drop-off the last part.
Brian Beshore has been involved with internet marketing for several years and publishes his own home business guide;
http://tinyurl.com/7yxhx
Contact Brian at dizzyobrian@excite.com and visit his website at
http://www.bayshorerecords.com 
