I've been trying to get my website up and running, did the design but had lots of trouble with coding. I tried WYSIWYG softwares(Freeway and Rapidweaver), did not find them useful unless you have some sort of knowledge of how CSS and HTML stuff work.
Have tried various templates, but since i have minimum knowledge on coding and putting a website together, had no luck with editing and customizing them neither.
I tried Flash Catalyst, pretty awesome software, requires no coding or whatsoever knowledge to create interactive sites, flash galleries and many more. I did a site with a few pages, gallery and audio pages - looked great, but it was too slow to load and wasn't really useful for anything else. I figured that Flash Catalyst was an excellent tool to create interactive widgets, galleries and other media, but it was not the best tool to build a whole website.
I tried Joomla to build an online portfolio, but it was template based only, and to build your own template you had to use a template building software ( Aristeer ), and you'd still need to know a little about CSS.
I ended up going with Wordpress, picking up a "Weaver" theme that was very easy to customize, and it had a bunch of tools to make it a breeze, plus now i have my blog on my site as well. And my expenses were minimum, i'm only paying for my hosting, Wordpress and most of the plugins you'll need is free. (As well as Joomla)
I'd say if you have very little to none knowledge on how to code stuff, and tight on budget, go with Joomla or Wordpress, they are open source and have various useful plugins for creating your portfolio website.

^Is that supposed to be spam?

Oh, and if you're a creative professional looking to put up an online portfolio without dealing with the issues of web hosting, coding, etc., then you should try behance.net.

It's sort of like DeviantArt, but with a more professional image. You won't have your own site, but they have a very slick and clean user portfolio page. You can also use it to showcase video works and written works.

I've personally been very impressed with the quality of work I've seen on that site.