A Facebook page and a website do different jobs — what you actually control, what happens if you lose access, and when a page alone is a real risk.
Short answer: a Facebook page is free, fast to set up, and good for posting updates to an existing audience — but you don't own it, Meta does, and a restricted or suspended account can mean losing that presence with limited recourse. A website on your own domain doesn't carry that particular risk, and generally has more control over how it shows up in Google's search results. Most small businesses benefit from having both, not from choosing one over the other.
A Facebook page is a genuinely reasonable way for a small business to start — it's free, quick, and puts you in front of people who are already using the platform. The question worth asking isn't whether it's useful, but whether it's enough on its own, and what you're accepting if it is.
A Facebook page lives entirely inside Meta's platform. The layout, the features available, and the algorithm deciding who sees a post are all decisions made by the platform, not the business. That's the trade for the convenience — you're a tenant, not an owner.
Small business Facebook pages and accounts do sometimes get restricted or suspended, and recovering one can be slow, and isn't guaranteed to succeed. For a business whose entire online presence is that one page, that's not a hypothetical inconvenience — it's the whole thing disappearing at once, through a decision made by someone else. A website on a domain you own and control doesn't carry that specific risk: nobody can suspend your own domain the way a platform can restrict an account on it.
A Facebook page can sometimes appear in Google's results, and it's searchable within Facebook's own search. But it doesn't behave the same way an independent website does — a site with its own pages, built around the actual words a customer searches for, generally has more scope to be found for exactly what a business offers. A single Facebook page competing for a customer's attention has less room to do that.
There's also a practical access issue worth knowing: some content on the platform can require a Facebook or Instagram account to view in full, which is a barrier a fully public website simply doesn't have.
These aren't competitors for the same job. A Facebook page is well suited to quick updates, photos and messaging with people who already follow the business. A website is the thing that's genuinely owned, that keeps working — and keeps being findable — whatever any one platform decides to change next. Most small businesses are better served having both than picking one.
It depends on the risk you're willing to accept. A Facebook page is free, fast to set up and easy to post to, but you don't own it — Meta controls what happens to it, and a restricted or suspended account can mean losing that presence with limited recourse. A website on your own domain doesn't carry that particular risk.
Sometimes, but not as reliably as an independent website can manage. A website with its own pages built around what customers actually search for generally has more control over how and where it shows up in Google's results than a profile page inside another platform.
No — they're complementary, not a choice between one or the other. A Facebook page is good for quick updates and messaging with an existing audience; a website is the thing you fully own and control. Most small businesses benefit from having both, with the website as the one that doesn't depend on someone else's platform.