Do I need a website if I sell on Instagram?
Instagram is where discovery happens here and you should keep it. But you do not own it, nobody finds it on Google, and everything a customer needs is buried in a story that expired yesterday. A website is not a replacement for Instagram. It is the part you own, and it should be cheap.
Last checked 14 August 2026. Prices on this page are ours and current.
What Instagram is genuinely better at
Being found by people who were not looking for you. That is a real thing and no website does it. A good reel reaches people who had never heard of your business, and no amount of search optimisation replicates that.
It is also where the social proof lives. People check whether you posted recently and whether real customers comment, and that is a legitimate trust signal.
So this is not an argument for leaving. Keep posting.
Three things it cannot do for you
You cannot be found on Google through it. When somebody types the name of your service and your city, Instagram is not what answers. That search is somebody with their wallet out, and it goes to whoever has a page about it.
You do not own it. An account can be restricted, hacked, or lost to an appeal process with nobody to call. Businesses here lose accounts with years of work in them and the only recourse is a form.
And it is a bad filing cabinet. Your prices are in a story that expired, your hours are in a comment, your menu is a photograph from March. A customer who wants to know one specific thing has to scroll or message you, which means you answer it by hand again.
What the website is actually for
Being the answer when somebody searches. Holding the boring facts in one place that does not expire: services, prices, hours, where you are, how to book.
And being the thing you own. If Instagram disappeared tomorrow, the customers who already found you can still reach you.
For most businesses that is a few pages, not a project. A shop window that costs $299 and takes a day is the honest version of this. If somebody is quoting you thousands for what is essentially your prices and a map, ask what the rest of the money is for.
How they should work together
Instagram brings people in. The website answers the questions that stop them buying. WhatsApp closes it, because that is where they will message you anyway.
The practical version: put the link in your bio, make sure the page loads fast on a phone, and put a WhatsApp button on every page. Then stop answering what are your prices in your direct messages twelve times a day, because the answer has somewhere to live.
Do not take our word for it.
The shop window, built in front of you, with both prices in full.
- Can I just use a link in bio page?
- Better than nothing, and it is still rented from somebody else and still invisible to Google. Fine as a stopgap, not as the thing you own.
- Will a website get me customers on its own?
- Not quickly and we would rather say so. Being found on Google is slow. What a site does immediately is stop losing people who already found you and could not get an answer.
- How cheap can it honestly be?
- Ours starts at $299 paid once, live in about a day, plus roughly a dollar a month for the domain. That is a real number for a real site, not a starter tier.
- Do I need an online shop?
- Only if people will actually pay online for what you sell. Plenty of businesses here are better served by bookings and a WhatsApp button than by a checkout nobody uses.
Tell us what you are trying to work out and we will answer it straight, including when the answer is that you do not need us.
Or email hello@ahlelak.com