Would you choose an template for your bussiness or hire an designer?

Depends on budget and business.

My dad has a plumbing business, the free template he found works fine for him, and as it is just in the startup stages "Free" is the best. He did donate a small fee (something like $10) to the designer because it would be used For Profit.

Now one of my clients who has a couple books out and had a bigger budget to go with hired someone to design the site to her specifications.

For ExonNet, we hired someone to come in, but again, that was only after it was more established and there was room in the budget for the design. If we redid the design we would hire again.

I think it all depends on what stage in "life" the business is in.