Do you actually need a website if you have a Facebook page?

I hear this every week doing outreach. A groomer, a trainer, a cleaner, a guy who does gutters — they've got a Facebook page with real followers and real reviews, and they're happy with it. "I don't need a website. Everyone finds me on Facebook." A dog trainer told me almost exactly that a few weeks ago, word for word.

Here's the thing most people selling websites won't tell you: sometimes they're right. So before I make the case for a site, let me make the case against one.

When a Facebook page genuinely is enough

If all of these are true, you can probably stay where you are:

• Your customers are already following you. You post, people see it, they book. Your growth comes from word of mouth and shares, not from strangers searching.
• You don't need to be found by people who've never heard of you. A wedding photographer who books a year out on referrals is in a different spot than a plumber who lives on emergency calls.
• You reply fast in Messenger and you're fine living there. For a lot of local trades, the DM is the booking system, and that works.

If that's you, a website is a nice-to-have, not a must. I'd rather tell you that than sell you something you'll forget you're paying for. Plenty of good businesses run entirely on a Facebook page. If yours is one of them, keep your money.

But there's a tell for when it stops being enough. Actually, three.

Tell #1: You don't own it

Your Facebook page isn't yours. It sits on land you rent, under rules you don't write.

Meta can restrict your reach, change what shows in the feed, suspend the account over a mistaken policy flag, or decide organic posts from businesses should get seen by fewer people — and they've done all of these. Ask anyone who woke up locked out of a page they'd spent five years building. There's no phone number to call. Your followers, your reviews, your photos, the whole thing — gone or frozen, and no way to move it.

A website on your own domain is the opposite. You own the address. If your host annoys you, you take the site somewhere else and keep everything. It's the one piece of your online presence that can't be taken away by a company that has never heard your name.

Think of the Facebook page as a stall at a market you don't own. The website is the shop with your name on the door.

Tell #2: You're invisible on Google

This is the big one, and it's the one people underestimate.

When someone types "dog groomer near me" or "gutter cleaning St. Charles" into Google — and that is how most people look for a local business now — Facebook pages barely surface. Google shows its own map results and websites. A Facebook page ranks for your business name, which only helps the people who already know it. For everyone else, the ones you actually want, you're not there.

So you're invisible to the exact customer who's ready to buy and doesn't know you yet. They search, they find three competitors with websites, they call one of them. You never knew they were looking. There are quieter versions of this same problem that cost businesses customers without them ever noticing — but the Facebook-only version is the loudest one.

If your growth depends on being found by strangers, a Facebook page is a locked door with the lights off.

Tell #3: It reads as less legit than you are

Fair or not, a business with its own website reads as more established than one with only a Facebook page. Same work, same reviews — the site just signals "this is a real operation, they've been around, they'll be around next year."

For some customers that's the difference between calling you and calling the other guy. When someone's about to let a stranger into their home, or hand over their dog, or write a deposit check, they look you up first. A page that could belong to a hobbyist and a site built for the business do not land the same way, even when the business behind them is identical.

The part nobody mentions: it's not either/or

Here's what gets lost in the argument. Getting a website doesn't mean leaving Facebook. Keep the page. Keep posting. The site is just the thing you own that everything else points at.

Your Facebook bio links to it. Your Google listing links to it. It's the place where a stranger who found you on Google can see your work, your prices, and how to reach you — without needing a Facebook account to do it. One of the businesses I built a site for had a page he liked and just needed a place to send people. The site didn't replace anything. It gave the rest of it somewhere to land.

So — do you need one?

Straight answer: if you're growing on referrals and happy in the DMs, no, not yet. Stay on Facebook and don't let anyone guilt you off it.

If you're trying to get found by people who don't know you, if being locked out of that page would sink you, or if you've ever lost a job to a competitor whose only real edge was looking more legit — then yes, and the sooner the better. It doesn't have to be expensive; here's what one actually costs around here and what you get for it.

And if you genuinely can't tell which camp you're in, don't guess. That's the whole reason for the offer below.