Do you need a website if you have a Facebook page? (Honest answer: it depends who's looking)

Plenty of contractors have run a good business for ten years off a Facebook page and word of mouth. So when someone asks “do I really need a website?”, the honest answer isn’t an automatic yes. It’s a question back: who are you trying to reach?

The short answer: a Facebook page works for people who already know you. A website works for people who don’t. If all your work comes from referrals and repeat customers, Facebook can be enough. If you want strangers searching “water heater repair near me” to call you, Facebook was never built for that, and a website is.

Here’s how to tell which group you’re in, and why the gap is getting bigger.

What Facebook is actually good at

Before we pile on, give Facebook its due. For a lot of home-service businesses it does real work:

• Social proof for referrals. Someone’s neighbor says “call Mike’s Plumbing.” They look you up, see recent job photos and a few comments, and they call. Facebook did its job.
• Showing the work. Before-and-after photos of a new roof or a cleaned-up yard sell better than any paragraph of copy.
• Local groups. In a lot of towns the neighborhood Facebook group is where recommendations happen. Being active and helpful there is legitimate marketing.

If your calendar is full and every job comes through people who already trust you, you may not need a website right now. We’ll say that out loud even though building websites is what we sell.

Where Facebook falls apart: people who’ve never heard of you

The trouble starts with the customer who doesn’t know your name. Their AC died at 9pm in July. They don’t open Facebook. They open Google, or more and more, they ask ChatGPT or read the AI answer at the top of the results.

Facebook does badly in all three places, for structural reasons:

• Google ranks pages, and Facebook pages are thin pages. A business page gives Google a name, a phone number and a stream of posts. It doesn’t have a page about “tankless water heater installation in Plano” with prices, process and service area. Your competitor’s website does, and that page is the one that gets ranked.
• You don’t control the layout. You can’t add a service page, a FAQ, a pricing guide or a city page. Facebook decides what a business page looks like, and it looks the same for everyone.
• Logged-out visitors get a login wall. Plenty of people aren’t on Facebook, or aren’t logged in on their phone’s browser. Many of them see a “log in to see more” prompt and leave.

The AI-search problem nobody mentions

This is the part that changed recently, and it matters more every month.

Look at Facebook’s own robots.txt file, the public rulebook that tells crawlers what they can access. It names a list of approved bots, and the last rule blocks everyone else from the whole site. OpenAI’s documentation says its search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, is what surfaces websites in ChatGPT’s search results. That bot isn’t on Facebook’s approved list.

In plain English: when ChatGPT searches the web for “best electrician in my area,” your Facebook page probably isn’t one of the pages it can read. The rules can change any time, and they’re Meta’s to change, not yours. That’s the real problem. Your visibility in AI answers would depend on a deal between two tech companies you have no say in.

A website on your own domain is the opposite. You decide which crawlers get in. You write the answers to the questions customers ask. And that’s the content AI assistants quote when they decide which businesses to name.

You’re renting, not owning

Even if you ignore search completely, there’s still the ownership question.

Your Facebook page lives on someone else’s land. Accounts get hacked. Pages get restricted by automated moderation with no human to call. Reach for business posts has fallen for years, so the followers you built often don’t see what you post unless you pay to boost it. That’s just how platforms work: you’re a tenant.

A website on your own domain is the one piece of online real estate that’s actually yours, as long as it’s set up right. (If a former designer or “free website” company holds the keys, it may not be. Here’s how to check who really owns your website.)

Facebook-only vs. website: the quick decision

Facebook alone is probably fine if:

• 90%+ of your jobs come from referrals and repeat customers
• You’re booked out and not trying to grow
• Your service area is small and everyone already knows your truck

You need a website if:

• You want new customers who’ve never heard of you
• You compete with other companies in a mid-sized or bigger market
• You do higher-ticket jobs where people compare two or three quotes
• You want to show up in Google Maps, regular search or AI answers
• You’ve ever lost a job because “they had a website and looked more legit”

For most home-service businesses trying to grow, the second list wins.

What a website actually needs to be (less than you think)

The good news: this isn’t a $15,000 project. A home-service website that does its job needs:

1. A homepage that says what you do, where, and how to call in the first screen, on a phone.
2. One page per main service: what it is, roughly what it costs, how long it takes, and what areas you cover.
3. Reviews and real job photos, the same ones that work on Facebook.
4. A click-to-call number and a short form. Nothing else in the way.
5. Fast loading on a cheap phone on cell data. That’s the device your customer is using in the driveway.

That’s five to eight pages, not fifty. If you’re wondering about budget, here’s what a professional website actually costs in 2026. Short version: less than one good job for most trades.

Keep the Facebook page

This isn’t either/or. Keep posting job photos on Facebook. Keep answering in the local groups. Just add a link to your website in the bio, and treat Facebook as the place people check you out after hearing your name, while the website catches everyone who hasn’t heard it yet.

The website gets you found. Facebook helps convince people once they’ve found you. Most businesses that grow need both, and they need the website first.

The bottom line

If you’re happy with referral-only work, Facebook is enough, and nobody should talk you out of that. If you want strangers to find you on Google, in Maps and in AI answers, a Facebook page can’t get you there. A small, fast website on your own domain can.

That’s the kind of site we build: lean, fast and set up for local SEO from day one. See how we approach web design, or tell us about your business. If your Facebook page and a full calendar are already doing the job, we’ll tell you to save your money.