I'm trying to build a site similar to infogroupdirect .com from scratch. This site will be for companies to upload their contact data too and for people looking for that contact info to login and pay for the service. I was quoted $500 upto $1800 for it from getafreelancer .com does that seem reasonable? or is there another way that I could build something similar with a free CMS template or something similar? I'm not very familiar with this kind of design.
When hiring programmers, just remember: "If you pay peanuts, you'll get monkeys." Depending on exactly how "fancy" you want the interface to be, it might even be a good bit above that to have the site developed the proper way. Most of software development costs come form code maintenance, not the initial building, so just make sure that you have someone doing it who can do it the right way, as on-going maintenance will be a lot easier that way.
I'm sure you could find an open source yellow pages clone to hack out and make something like that if you are looking for the free / diy type environment. Honestly though, You've got your work cut out for you with a similar site though. That type site will get no organic traffic and getting people to buy the ads is going to be a PITA ... If you've got a db dump with all the company names and categories I might be able to do something similar (not exact) for a fairer price.