I noticed that 1 of the things that comes with upgrading your hosting is "Easy Site Builder". What is this and what does it involve? Also, how does it differ from building your site without upgrading??
you can either use bravenet's forms of online builders or programs like dreamweaver, frontpage or any html editors
the easy website builder that they say they have is bravenet's online editors. You can use them with your free site or if you want to purchase the domain and premium hosting
Your choice of editors are not one of the things that is different. You can struggle with the difficulties of the "easy builder", or use one of the many free or expensive programs available elsewhere.
The appearance of your site (apart from the free site advertising) will depend mostly on your skill, not your choice of hosting. But there are a number of things you can do on premium hosting that won't be possible with a free site.