Do I need a website if I have a Facebook page?
Short answer: a Facebook page helps, but it can’t replace a website. You don’t own it, Google barely surfaces it when people search for services, and it can vanish with the account.
What a Facebook page does well
Credit where due: a page is free, fast to set up, easy to post to, and it’s where some of your customers already are. For a brand-new business running entirely on referrals, a well-kept page with photos and quick replies is genuinely better than nothing.
Where it stops working
- You don’t own it. The page lives on Facebook’s terms. Accounts get locked, hacked, and suspended by automated systems every day, and appealing is famously slow. A business that exists only as a page can disappear overnight through no fault of its own.
- Google barely shows it. When someone searches “fence repair” plus your city, the results are websites and the map pack. Pages rarely place. The people searching with intent — the best customers there are — mostly can’t find a Facebook-only business.
- The reach isn’t really yours. What your followers see is decided by an algorithm tuned for Facebook’s goals, not yours. And for the growing share of people who aren’t logged in, much of your page is behind a wall.
- It can’t do the structural work. A website can name every city you serve, carry the structured data that search engines and AI assistants read, and host email on your own domain. A page can’t do any of that.
The practical answer
Think of it as order of operations, not either/or:
- A domain registered in your name — even before there’s a site on it, it anchors your email and your identity.
- A Google Business Profile — for service businesses this does more than Facebook ever will.
- A simple website — who you are, where you work, what you do, how to reach you. It doesn’t need to be big; it needs to exist and be yours.
- Keep the Facebook page — pointed at the website, doing what it’s good at.
The page is a channel. The website is the asset. Channels come and go on someone else’s terms; the asset is yours for as long as you renew the domain.