A professional-looking logo is a necessity for a business website: not only does it add credibility to your web presence, but it can be a powerful branding tool that helps potential customers remember your business. So what do you do if you need a logo for your new business or a social media account? Here are four options.

Create One Online

There are a number of websites that let you modify pre-designed logos or piece your own together from a selection of images and customizable text. While these logos often have a pre-designed feel, some websites do offer a wide range of options that will let you create a unique logo that will serve your purpose. These sites are also often quite affordable; for example, getting a logo from LogoYes costs about $1.

Let's take a look at designing with LogoYes. First, you need to select a type of image; there are dozens of categories to choose from, including baskets, cats, gazebos, paint brushes, torches, and wings.

Each category contains at least a few choices, giving you hundreds of possible options.

Once you've chosen an image, you can scale and rotate it, change the color, and add text.

Finally, you can preview your image, add the finishing touches, and check out! Just add your credit card information, approve the $1 charge, and you have a new logo.

While this won't get you a super customizable, standout logo, it will give you something relatively unique and you do get enough options to find something that's fitting for your business. Other websites that let you create logos this way include LogoGarden, FlamingText, and LogoMaker. You can also get inspiration from these 10 logo design websites.

Hire a Logo Design Company

This sounds like an incredibly expensive option, but you might be surprised at the number of affordable deals you can find. Let's take a look at a company that I've actually used in the past, LogoNerds. Their lowest-end package is just $27, and the next step up is only $47.

And as you can see from their portfolio, they do fantastic work.

To get started, all you have to do is fill out a questionnaire — you'll be asked what your brand is like, what sort of feeling you want the logo to evoke, if you have any ideas on what you might like to see, and so on. After submitting the questionnaire, you'll receive a number of proofs in a few days. Pick the one that you like the most, ask for a few revisions, and then make a final decision.

After that, you can download your logo in a number of formats that will allow you to put your logo on your webpage, physical collateral, or anywhere else you could need it. The whole process usually takes less than a week.

If you're looking for another option, check out LogoMojo and LogoWorks, two other custom professional logo designers. They're significantly more expensive, but they also do extremely high-quality work.

Hire a Freelancer

A lot of designers do freelance work, and hiring one to work directly with you is a great way to have a lot of say in the design process — you'll likely have direct access to the designer and will be able to negotiate the revisions that you want.

The trade-off is, of course, expense. Hiring an experienced, sought-after freelancer can cost upwards of $100 per hour, and that adds up fast. Even if you get a good deal, you could still be looking at several hundred dollars to get your logo. That's a lot of money, but you'll also be getting a professional-quality exclusive design out of the deal, so it might be worth the expense.

Using a freelance marketplace like PeoplePerHour could save you some money; as you can see, there's a wide selection of Hourlies available that range £29 to £99 (about $50 to $170) for a custom professional logo with unlimited revisions.

You could potentially save some money by using Fiverr, as well. There are quite a few talented individuals trying to get some experience and exposure on Fiver, so by doing a bit of digging you usually find someone who's very talented and willing to work for less money than you'd pay on other websites. (I'd still recommend paying more, though, as you'll likely get better results — and designers need to eat, too!)

Design It Yourself

While most people won't feel that they have the skills to design their own logo, this option has the huge advantage of being free. And while it requires some artistic talent, there are enough free tutorials available online that you might be able to get away with minimal artistic training and a few hours spent with Illustrator or a free alternative like Inkscape.

We have great tutorials available for designing a logo with Logo Designer Studio and using custom shapes in Photoshop to design a logo, so check those out. You can even design a logo with Microsoft Word!

If you're looking to design your own logo, you can check out Adobe's How to Design a Logo with Illustrator, The Ultimate Guide to Logo Design from Web Designer's Depot, and 10 Tips for Designing Logos That Don't Suck at Design Shack.

How did you create your company's logo? Did you do it yourself, or use one of the tools discussed above? Share your experiences below! And if you design a new one, post a link so we can check it out!