If you’re a small business owner who knows you need to “get online” but isn’t sure where to start, you’ve probably already hit the wall of conflicting advice. Someone tells you to set up a Facebook page. Someone else says you need Instagram. Your nephew says he can build you a Wix site for free. Your accountant mentions Google. It’s a lot — and most of it is vague enough to be useless.
We’re going to be direct about this. There are four main options for getting a small business online, they are not equal, and they serve different purposes. Understanding the difference between them is the first step toward making a decision that actually helps your business.
The Four Options, Laid Out Plainly
Before we compare them, here’s a quick map of what you’re working with:
- Social media — Facebook Business Page, Instagram, Google My Business posts, and similar platforms. Free to create, rented from the platform, visible only inside that platform’s walls.
- Google Business Profile — Your listing in Google Search and Google Maps. Free to claim. Controls the information people see when they search your business name or category.
- DIY website builders — Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy Website Builder, and similar tools. Monthly subscription, drag-and-drop design, no coding required. You manage it yourself.
- A professional custom website — Designed and built by a developer, hosted on a server, owned by you. Typically a one-time build cost plus optional monthly hosting or maintenance.
Each of these has a role to play. The mistake most business owners make is treating them as interchangeable — or assuming that doing any one of them is “enough.”
Social Media Is a Tool, Not a Foundation
Social media is genuinely useful for small businesses. It’s a way to stay in front of existing customers, share photos of your work, run promotions, and get found by people browsing their feeds. We’re not here to tell you to skip it.
But social media is not a foundation for your online presence. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: you don’t own it.
Your Facebook Business Page exists at Meta’s discretion. They can change the algorithm tomorrow and cut your organic reach in half — they’ve done it before. They can suspend your account if an automated system flags something incorrectly. They can bury your page behind paid advertising unless you pay to boost posts. You have no recourse, no contract, and no rights to any of that traffic.
More practically: a customer who finds you through a Google search is not looking at your Facebook page. They’re looking at a website. According to a 2023 BrightLocal study, 98% of consumers used the internet to find information about a local business in the past year — and the vast majority of those searches happen on Google, not inside a social platform. If you don’t have a website, you’re invisible to most of them.
Use social media. Post consistently. But build your foundation somewhere you actually own.
Google Business Profile — Non-Negotiable, But Not Enough Alone
Your Google Business Profile is the listing that shows up when someone searches for your business name or a category like “plumber near me.” It shows your address, phone number, hours, reviews, and photos directly in search results and on Google Maps. Google says businesses with a complete profile are 2.7 times more likely to be considered reputable by customers. That alone makes it worth setting up immediately if you haven’t already.
The catch: your Google Business Profile works significantly better when it’s backed by a real website. Google’s local search algorithm uses your website as a signal — it crawls your pages, reads your content, and uses what it finds to decide whether your business is a strong match for a given search. A business with a well-built website and a complete Google profile outperforms one with only a profile in nearly every local search category.
So: claim and fill out your Google Business Profile immediately, regardless of what else you do. But don’t stop there and call it done.
DIY Website Builders — A Real Option With Real Limits
Wix, Squarespace, and similar tools have improved a lot over the past decade. For a very simple business — a single-location service provider who just needs something to show clients — they can produce something passable without requiring you to learn to code or hire anyone.
But “passable” is the ceiling, not the floor. The limitations show up in three areas that actually matter:
Performance. DIY builders add layers of overhead — JavaScript frameworks, image processing, platform code — that slow your site down. Page speed is a ranking factor in Google. Slower sites rank lower and lose visitors before a single word is read. Google’s own data shows that as page load time increases from one to three seconds, the probability of a visitor bouncing increases by 32%.
SEO control. Builder platforms limit what you can edit at the code level. Title tags, meta descriptions, heading structure, schema markup, canonical URLs — all of the technical elements that help Google understand your content — are either locked behind the platform’s interface or simply not available. You can do basic SEO, but not the kind that wins competitive searches.
Ownership. This is the one that catches people off guard. If you stop paying Wix or Squarespace, your site disappears. You don’t get a copy of the files. You can’t take the site to another host. Everything you built on their platform stays on their platform. A custom-built site is yours — the files, the code, all of it — regardless of where it’s hosted or who built it.
We’ve done a full, honest comparison of the major platforms in our article on Wix vs. Squarespace vs. a custom website if you want to dig deeper into the specifics before making a decision.
A Professional Website — The Foundation Everything Else Builds On
Here’s the thing we hear from almost every client who comes to us after starting with a social page or a DIY builder: “I thought that would be enough and it wasn’t.” They got a Facebook page and waited for the phone to ring. It didn’t. Or they built a Wix site and found out two years later that it wasn’t ranking for anything because the platform couldn’t support the technical SEO work needed to compete.
A professionally built website is the piece that ties everything else together. Your Google Business Profile links to it. Your social media profiles link to it. Your business cards, your email signature, your Google Ads — all of them point back to a home base that you own and control. It’s where you make the case for your business in full, without a platform’s character limits, feed algorithms, or design constraints getting in the way.
What does “professionally built” actually mean? It means hand-coded pages that load fast. It means proper heading structure, semantic HTML, and meta tags that Google can read and interpret correctly. It means mobile-first design that works on every screen without squinting. It means a site that looks like your business takes itself seriously — because that’s what customers are judging when they land on your page for the first time.
The price for a professional site starts at $1,200 for a clean, well-built five-page site. Below that, the economics don’t support a developer spending the time required to do it right. What you get under $1,200 is usually a template with your information swapped in — which looks like a template, ranks like a template, and converts like a template.
If you’re weighing whether you need a website at all in 2026, we covered that question in detail in our article Do Small Businesses Still Need a Website in 2026? The short answer is yes — more than ever, actually. But the reasoning matters, so it’s worth reading if you’re on the fence.
The Right Order of Operations
If you’re starting from scratch and want to know exactly what to do and in what order, here it is:
1. Claim your Google Business Profile. Go to business.google.com, search for your business, and claim or create the listing. Fill out every field: hours, phone number, address, service areas, description, photos. This is free and takes an afternoon. Do it first because it takes a few days for Google to verify your listing.
2. Get a custom website built. This is your foundation. Even a tight five-page site — Home, About, Services, Contact, and one more relevant to your business — gives you a home base that you own, that Google can index, and that you can point everything else toward. Budget $1,200 to $2,500 for a professional result. If you want to understand the full build process before committing, start with our guide on how to get a website for your small business without getting ripped off.
3. Link everything together. Once your site is live, add the URL to your Google Business Profile, your Facebook page, your Instagram bio, your email signature, and anywhere else you have a presence. Consistent citations — your name, address, phone number, and website appearing the same way across the web — strengthen your local SEO signal.
4. Use social media to drive traffic back to your site. Now that you have a destination worth sending people to, social media becomes genuinely useful. Post your work, share your content, run promotions — and always link back to your website for the full story.
This sequence matters because the alternative — building a social following before you have a home base — means you’re building on rented land from the start. When you’re eventually ready to build a real site, you have to redirect all of that attention instead of having built it toward your own property from the beginning.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a website if I already have a Facebook Business Page?
Yes. A Facebook page is a useful supplement, but it’s not a substitute for a website. You don’t own your Facebook presence — Meta can change the algorithm, limit your reach, or suspend your account without notice. A website is the one piece of your online presence you actually control. It’s also where Google sends people who search for your business category, not your social media profile.
Is a Google Business Profile enough to get found locally?
A Google Business Profile is essential and you should set one up regardless of what else you do. But it’s not a replacement for a website. Google uses your website as a signal when deciding how prominently to display your business in local search results. A strong profile without a site will get you some visibility — a strong profile with a well-built site gives you significantly more.
What’s wrong with using a DIY website builder like Wix or Squarespace?
Nothing is inherently wrong with them for very simple use cases. The problems show up over time: slower page speeds that hurt your search ranking, limited control over how the site is built (which affects SEO), and the fact that you don’t truly own the site — if you stop paying, it disappears. A custom-built site is faster, more flexible, and yours to keep regardless of what any platform decides to do.
What does a professional small business website cost?
A professionally designed and built website for a small business typically starts around $1,200 and goes up from there depending on the number of pages and any custom features required. Below that price point, the math doesn’t work for a skilled developer spending real time on your project — you’re likely getting a template with your name swapped in. At Milestone, our starting price is $1,200 for a clean, hand-coded, SEO-ready site.