Do I need a website if I already have a Facebook page?

When a Facebook page really is enough

Start with the case for doing nothing, because it is stronger than most web people admit.

A Facebook page is free, it takes ten minutes, people already know how to use it, and messaging is built in. If your customers find you the way you actually get found, you may not need anything else yet.

It is genuinely enough if your work comes almost entirely from referrals and repeat customers. It is enough if you sell to a local community that lives in local Facebook groups: the church hall caterer, the cake maker, the person who sells eggs at the end of the drive. It is enough if you are testing whether a business idea works at all, and you would rather spend $500 on stock than on a website. It is enough if your business is genuinely seasonal or part-time and the phone rings from word of mouth.

If that is you, do not let anyone shame you into a website this month. Get the page complete, get your hours and phone number right, and get reviews.

The "not relevant to my industry" problem

A 2025 Clutch survey found that 83% of small businesses have a website and 17% have none. Of those without one, 34% said a website was "not relevant to my industry". Only 16% cited cost.

That is worth sitting with. The most common reason for not having a website is not money. It is a belief that the industry does not need one.

Sometimes that belief is correct. Often it is a decision made years ago that nobody has revisited. The test is not whether your industry is fashionable. It is whether people search for what you do before they hire someone. Nobody searches for "friend who bakes". Plenty of people search for "emergency plumber near me", "wedding cakes Toms River", "dog groomer that does nervous dogs".

The same survey found 45% of small businesses outsource their site to an agency and 9% to a freelancer, which tells you that most businesses that do build one do not build it themselves.

Six things a Facebook page cannot do

Be clear-eyed about the limits.

It will not reliably show up when somebody searches for your service. Search for a service plus a town and you will mostly get websites, map listings and directories. Facebook pages appear occasionally, usually for the business name rather than the need. If someone already knows your name they will find you. If they do not, they will find your competitor.

It will not let you control what appears. The layout, the order of information, what shows first, what adverts sit beside your posts, what the platform decides to promote this month. None of that is yours. Your prices sit below a cover photo you did not design.

It will not survive a lockout. Accounts get hacked, disabled by mistake, or lost when the person who set them up leaves. Recovering a business page from an automated support process can take weeks, and sometimes it does not happen at all. If your page is your entire online presence, that is your whole shopfront gone with no appeal you can ring up about.

It will not survive a platform change. Reach, features and formats change whenever the platform decides. You have no say and no notice.

It will not take bookings on your terms. You can bolt on messaging and third-party booking links, but the flow belongs to the platform. You cannot ask the four questions you need answered before you quote, or take a deposit the way you want.

It will not properly support your Google Business Profile. Your Maps listing is often the most valuable free thing a local business has. It has a website field. Google uses that site to corroborate what you do, where you do it and what you are called. A Facebook URL is better than nothing, but a real site with matching name, address and phone gives the listing something solid to stand on.

The thing that quietly costs you money

The gap is not glamour. It is trust and detail.

A Facebook page cannot easily hold your prices, your service area, your licence and insurance details, your guarantee, answers to the eight questions you get asked every week, and photos organised so somebody can see the exact job they need. It can hold some of it, buried in posts from eighteen months ago.

People deciding who to spend $3,000 with will look for that detail. When they cannot find it, they ring the business that published it.

A decision rule

Not a hard sell. Just a rule.

If your customers find you by name, a Facebook page is probably fine for now. Keep it current.

If your customers find you by need, so they are typing a problem into Google rather than your business name, you need a website. That is most trades, most professional services, most anything with a service area.

If losing the page tomorrow would cost you real money, you need something you own, whatever else you do.

And if you are quoting jobs over a few hundred dollars, the site pays for itself the first time someone chooses you because your prices and your process were written down where a stranger could read them.

What that actually costs

If the rule points to yes, the number is smaller than people expect. Agencies quote small business sites at $2,500 to $9,000. DIY builders run $0 to about $450 a year, forever, and you never own the result.

Storefront Smith sits between the two on purpose. $500 for a one-page site, $900 for five pages, $1,800 for an online store. One payment. You own the code and the domain, the domain is registered in your name, and hosting and the domain are billed at cost, roughly $15 to $25 a year and $0 to $5 a month. Live in about two weeks, with two rounds of revisions included.

Keep the Facebook page. It is still the best place for photos of yesterday's job and for people who already like you. The website is for the people who do not know you yet.