Is a Facebook page enough instead of a website?

For staying in front of people who already follow you, it works. For anyone searching, comparing or asking an assistant for a recommendation, it does not: the content is hard for automated readers to reach and is rarely written as an answer. It is also a channel you can lose without notice.

All my customers come from Google Maps. Does a website still help?

Yes, in two ways that are easy to underestimate. A profile linked to a real site tends to convert better, because people check before they call. And the site is where you answer the questions that decide a considered purchase. Maps brings the click; the page wins the job.

Can I use a link-in-bio page instead?

It is better than nothing and worse than a page. A link hub carries almost no readable content, usually sits on someone else's domain, and gives search engines and assistants nothing to quote. Treat it as a signpost, not a destination.

How much does the minimum version cost?

Less than most people expect for one honest page, and far more than they expect once "while we are at it" creeps in. The ranges and what moves them are in our guide to what a website costs in 2026.

Do I need a website if I have social media and a Google Business Profile?

Usually yes — but not for the reason you have been given. What you own versus what you rent, where buyers actually end up, and the honest cases where you can wait.

Key takeaways

Usually yes — but "looking professional" is the weakest argument for it. Ownership, durability and machine-readability are the real ones.
A Google Business Profile and social accounts are rented. A site on your own domain is the only channel you own outright.
A suspended profile takes the channel and your access to the audience in the same moment, on someone else's timetable.
AI assistants answer buying questions from pages they can fetch and quote. A profile behind a login is rarely quotable.
You can honestly wait if you are a single-location service business fed by Maps and word of mouth, and you sell nothing that needs explaining.

Do you need a website if you already have a Google Business Profile and social media?

For most small businesses, yes — but the argument usually given for it is the weak one. "You need a website to look professional" is a matter of taste, and plenty of profitable businesses run on a phone number and a van. The three arguments that actually hold up are duller and harder to dismiss: you do not own the other channels, they can be switched off without appeal, and the systems your customers increasingly ask for advice can only read one of them.

The honest version of the answer depends on how you get work today and on what you sell. So this article gives you the cases where the answer is no, not only the cases where it is yes.

What you own, and what you only rent

A Google Business Profile, an Instagram account and a Facebook page are accounts on someone else's platform. You agreed to terms you did not write, and those terms change without your involvement. A domain and the files behind it differ in kind: if your hosting company annoys you, you move the same files elsewhere the same afternoon, and the address your customers know keeps working.

This is not a theoretical distinction. Profiles get suspended — over a category change, a duplicate listing, a report from a competitor, or an automated decision nobody at the platform will explain to you. When it happens, you lose the channel and your access to the audience at once, and the appeal runs on the platform's schedule rather than yours.

A website does not make you immune to bad luck. It makes bad luck recoverable, because the asset is yours.

Where does a buyer looking for you actually end up?

Three routes matter for a small business, and they behave differently.

Maps and "near me" search. This is where a Google Business Profile is genuinely strong, and for a plumber or a hairdresser it can carry most of the demand. It answers "who is nearby and open".
Classic search. Here a profile competes badly against pages that explain, compare and answer. This is the ground a website is built for — SEO for small business covers what that takes.
An AI assistant. A growing share of buyers describe their problem to ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI answers and ask who to hire. This route barely touches your profile at all.

The mistake is assuming these are the same audience arriving through different doors. They are asking different questions. "Who is nearby" and "who should I trust with this" are not the same purchase.

Why AI assistants change the answer

Assistants build answers out of pages they can fetch and quote. That is the entire mechanism, and it is unforgiving in one specific way: content behind a login is effectively invisible. Most social platforms restrict what automated readers can reach, and even where a profile is public, it rarely contains a paragraph an assistant can lift as an answer. A grid of photos is not a quotable claim.

We measure this on ourselves rather than guessing. In our most recent check — July 2026, buying-intent prompts in Perplexity — every source the assistant cited was a web page. Not one was a social profile. The companies it recommended were the ones that existed in writing somewhere beyond their own domain.

The mechanics of becoming readable by these systems are a separate subject, and we wrote them up in how to make your website visible in AI. The point here is narrower: none of it is available to you without a page you control.

When you honestly do not need a website yet

Three situations where waiting is a defensible decision rather than procrastination.

You are a single-location service business fed by Maps and word of mouth, you are booked, and you sell nothing that needs explaining. A well-kept Google Business Profile with real photos and answered reviews is doing the job.
You are still testing whether the business exists. Spending three weeks on a site before anyone has paid you is the wrong order. Sell something first, by hand, badly.
You sell one product through a marketplace that owns the transaction anyway. The site becomes worth building when you want the customer relationship back.

The threshold is easier to state than most people expect. You need a site once you start paying for traffic and need somewhere to send it that you control; once the purchase becomes considered rather than urgent and someone has to read before they call; or once you carry an accessibility obligation.

What the European Accessibility Act adds for EU businesses

The European Accessibility Act has applied since 28 June 2025, and it is worth understanding before concluding that a social profile is a substitute. Where the rules cover what you sell, publishing only on a platform you do not control does not make the obligation disappear — and it leaves you unable to fix anything, because you do not own the interface. Whether your business falls inside the scope depends on what you sell and how large you are; the test is set out in our EAA guide.

This is not a reason to panic-build a website. It is a reason not to treat "I have a Facebook page" as a finished answer if you sell to consumers in the EU.

The minimum website that actually does the job

A first website does not need to be a project. It needs to answer, in plain text a machine can read, the questions a buyer and an assistant both ask:

What you do, for whom, and where — on the first screen, not inside a slideshow.
Roughly what it costs, or at least what the price depends on. Silence here loses more enquiries than a high number does.
Proof: real work, real names where you are allowed to use them, real reviews.
One obvious way to make contact, repeated.
Your own domain, real HTML, and a link to your Google Business Profile so the two reinforce each other.

That is one page done properly, not ten done vaguely. The numbers behind what this costs to have built are in how much a website costs in 2026.

Decide in five minutes

Answer these honestly and the decision usually makes itself.

If your profile were suspended tomorrow morning, how would a new customer find and contact you?
Can you point to a page you control that explains what you sell and what it costs?
Ask an assistant the question your customer would ask. Does anything of yours come back?
Are you about to spend money on ads? Where will that money land?

Two or more uncomfortable answers mean the website is no longer optional. One means you have time — but you should use it.