It’s a fair question, and one we get asked often. If you’ve already got a Facebook page with a few hundred followers and people message you there to book jobs, a website can feel like extra work for something you’re already managing fine without it. Here’s an honest look at where that holds up, and where it doesn’t.
Facebook is genuinely good at some things
If you’re posting regularly, getting messages, and jobs are coming in, that’s working, and there’s no reason to stop. Facebook is quick to update, familiar to most customers, and free to use. For word of mouth and repeat customers who already know you, it does a solid job.
But it’s not built for people who don’t know you yet
Here’s the gap. When someone searches “plumber Maidstone” on Google, a Facebook page rarely appears in those results. Google’s search results, and the map listings underneath them, are built around Google Business Profiles and websites, not social media pages. If your entire online presence lives on Facebook, you’re invisible to anyone finding you through a Google search, which is how most people look for a local trade or service they don’t already know.
You don’t own it
This is the one that catches people out. Facebook can change its rules, restrict your reach, suspend your account, or simply become less popular over time, and there’s nothing you can do about any of it. A website is yours. You own the domain, you control what’s on it, and nobody can take it away or change how it works without warning.
It looks different to a serious inquiry
Some customers, especially for higher value jobs like a new boiler installation or a full property refurbishment, want to see a proper website before they commit. A Facebook page can feel casual for that kind of decision, whereas a website with clear services, pricing, and reviews signals a business that’s established and worth trusting with a bigger job.
The honest answer: use both, but own one of them
The best setup isn’t Facebook or a website, it’s both, working together. Facebook for quick updates and community reach, a website as the place that actually gets found on Google and gives serious inquiries somewhere proper to land. One feeds the other. A website with a link to your Facebook page, and Facebook posts pointing back to your website, work harder together than either does alone.
Don’t have a website yet?
We build free 5-page websites for local businesses in Maidstone and Kent as part of our Local Starter package, from £79/month, alongside Google Business Profile management and hosting. It works alongside whatever you’re already doing on Facebook, not instead of it.