Do I really need a website, or is social media enough?

“We already have Instagram, we already have Facebook — why do we need a website?” It’s probably the question I hear the most when I talk to small businesses and associations about their online presence.

And I get the logic: social media is free, the community is already there, and you can post in two minutes. But there’s a problem that only shows up once it’s too late to fix.

What happened to Mar-Alto

Mar-Alto, the cultural association in Nazaré where I’m on the board, had exactly that kind of strong social media presence before it had its own website. At one point, the original Facebook page was hacked — and lost. Years of posts, of built-up reach, of people following the page, gone overnight. A new page had to be created, starting almost from zero.

That’s the risk nobody weighs when they decide “social media is enough”: it’s not just about reach, it’s about depending on an account you don’t control, on a platform that isn’t yours.

Hostage to the algorithm

The same thing happens, more subtly, every day: a business that only exists on Instagram or Facebook is held hostage by that platform’s algorithm. Who decides how many people see your posts isn’t you — it’s the platform, and its goal is clear: the less organic reach you get, the more likely you are to end up paying for ads to reach the people who already follow you.

There’s nothing wrong with using social media — I use it myself — the problem is depending only on it.

What changes when the site is yours

A website of your own is your property, full stop. It doesn’t depend on a platform deciding whether you show up or not, it doesn’t disappear if an account gets banned or hacked, and it gives a more credible, trustworthy look to whoever visits for the first time and doesn’t know you yet — it is, in the end, the face of your business.

That ownership extends to your image too. On social media you’re always limited to the format the platform imposes — the same profile layout, the same post templates every other business also uses. On your own site, the visual language is entirely yours: colors, typography, photography, everything can follow your brand’s identity from start to finish, with no borrowed templates. I don’t need to be a designer to notice when something is visually careful and coherent, or when it isn’t — looks matter too, and it shows in the trust you convey to whoever visits for the first time.

And there’s an advantage social media simply doesn’t offer: a website can be found by search engines (SEO) and, increasingly, by AI assistants — when someone asks Google or an AI “who does X near me,” it’s your site that can show up, not a post buried in someone else’s feed. And it’s still easy to share — a link works anywhere: WhatsApp, email, a business card.

“But a website is expensive and complicated”

These days, not really. A domain costs little, and there are tools where you can build a site without a big investment. The question isn’t the cost of entry — it’s what you end up owing to the tool you chose.

A free or low-cost builder, like Wix, has real limits: the features you can have are whatever the platform decided to offer in the plan you’re paying for (or doesn’t offer at all, because it’s free). If you need something specific to your business, you’re stuck waiting for the tool to add it someday — or never.

When you hire someone to build your site to your own specifications, you gain two things: an experienced partner you can turn to whenever you need help or want to change something, and a site built for what your business actually needs — without the feature ceiling of a generic tool. The possibilities become practically limitless, always within whatever budget is available, of course.

Now what?

If this made you think it might be time for a website of your own, the next step is simple: talk to me. I don’t promise 2am replies or agency timelines — but I do promise an honest conversation about what makes sense for your case, even if the answer is “for now, what you have is enough.”