Do I need a website if I have Instagram?

This is a fair question and the honest answer is not always “yes”. Plenty of businesses run well on a social profile alone. But the two do different jobs, and it is worth knowing which one you are missing before you decide.

What a profile does well

It is where the audience already is, it costs nothing, posting takes seconds, and the feed format suits work that is visual and ongoing. For a bakery, a tattoo studio or a florist, a well-kept profile is genuinely persuasive in a way a static page is not.

What it cannot do

It does not answer people searching

This is the big one. Someone typing “emergency electrician near me” into a search engine is ready to hire in the next hour. Profiles rarely surface for those searches, and when they do it is by accident rather than because you set it up. A page you control can be written to answer exactly that query.

You do not own it

Accounts get suspended by mistake, reach changes without warning, and platforms rise and fall. Everything you build there sits on land you rent. A domain you own is the one address that survives whatever happens to any particular platform.

It buries the practical details

Your opening hours, price list, service area and terms end up in a post from March that nobody can find. On a site they have a permanent address you can link to and update in a minute.

It does not read as established

This one is unfair but real. For anything involving a significant sum or a stranger entering your home, a business with only a social profile reads as less settled — particularly to older customers and to anyone comparing three suppliers on a spreadsheet.

A profile is where people find you if they already follow the space. A site is where people find you if they have a problem right now.

When a profile really is enough

• Your customers come through recommendation and discovery, not search.
• Your work is inherently visual and changes constantly.
• You are testing an idea and do not want to commit yet.
• You are at capacity and not looking for new customers at all.

In those cases a site is optional. Do claim your business profile on the maps app anyway — that is free, takes minutes, and it is how local customers actually find opening hours and directions.

The pragmatic answer

Keep the profile; that is where the personality and the ongoing work live. Add a small site for the things a feed handles badly: what you do, where, what it costs, and how to reach you. Four pages is plenty. Then link them to each other so whichever one a customer finds first leads to the other.