"We don't need a website — we've got a Facebook page." I hear it a lot, usually from busy owners who'd rather be running their business than thinking about the internet. Completely understandable. Also, increasingly, expensive thinking.
A Facebook page is a good tool. Here's why it can't be your only one.
Your posts reach almost nobody
When you post to your business page, Facebook shows it to a small slice of the people who chose to follow you — organic page reach has been in single-digit percentages for years, and it keeps shrinking. A few hundred followers might mean a couple of dozen people actually seeing each post.
Why? Because Facebook sells reach. The platform is designed so that the fix for invisibility is the "Boost post" button. There's nothing evil about that — it's their business model — but it means your "free" page is really a slowly tightening funnel toward ad spend.
Your website doesn't throttle itself. Everyone who arrives sees everything.
Google can't send customers to your posts
Here's the one that costs real money: when someone searches "plumber Rangiora" or "cake maker Christchurch", Google's results are websites. Facebook posts effectively don't rank — they're locked inside a platform Google can barely see into, they vanish down the timeline in days, and they're not built to answer a search.
Every customer who searches for what you do and finds a competitor's website instead is revenue your Facebook page never even knew about. I've written about how that finding process actually works — none of it happens on a Facebook page.
You're renting, not owning
Your page, its followers and its message history live on Meta's platform, under Meta's rules, subject to Meta's algorithm changes. Accounts get restricted or locked every day — sometimes by mistake, often with no human to appeal to. Ask any business owner who's been through it: recovering a hijacked or wrongly-flagged page can take months. Some never get theirs back.
If your entire online presence is that page, your business is one automated decision away from invisible.
A website in your own name, on your own domain, with hosting registered to you (that's how I set every client up — it's in my terms) can't be taken away by anyone's algorithm.
Trust: fair or not, people judge
Picture two sparkies quoting the same job. One has a Facebook page with holiday-hours posts and a couple of tagged photos. The other has a clean website: services, photos of finished work, reviews, service area, a proper contact form.
Same skills, maybe. But one of them looks established, and one looks like a side hustle. Surveys keep finding the same thing — a large majority of customers say a business without a website looks less credible. First impressions are formed before the first phone call.
There's also the practical stuff a page simply can't do well: show up for a dozen different searches with dedicated pages, take bookings or orders, present your full price list, or collect enquiries into your inbox at 11 pm.
What a Facebook page is genuinely good at
This isn't a "delete Facebook" post. A page is great for:
- Community presence and word-of-mouth — being shareable and taggable.
- Day-to-day updates: today's specials, market stall locations, "closed for the long weekend".
- The messaging habit — plenty of customers like a quick DM.
- Local groups, which are still gold for tradies and food businesses.
The winning setup is boring and effective: the website is home base, the page is a signpost. Facebook builds familiarity; the website converts searches into enquiries and looks after the customers who've never heard of you. Each post links back to a place you own.
The money question
"But a website costs money and Facebook is free." The gap is smaller than you'd think — a proper one-page business site starts around $900 one-off, with running costs of about $106 a year. I've published the full pricing breakdown, openly.
Weigh that against a year of boosted posts — or one customer a month who searched, didn't find you, and rang someone else.
The short version
Keep the Facebook page. Just don't build your business on rented land. If you're ready to own your corner of the internet, my quote form takes five minutes, and the price you get is fixed before anything starts.