The short answer
For most small businesses, the honest answer is: you can start on Instagram, but you will eventually want both, because they do different jobs. Instagram is where people discover you and get a feel for you. A website is where you convert that interest and where Google can send strangers who are searching.
What Instagram is good at
Instagram is excellent for personality and for showing that you are active and current. People check it the way they used to walk past a shop window. If your work is visual—food, hair, interiors, products—it can carry a lot of your marketing on its own for a while.
What Instagram cannot do
You do not own it. The account, the reach and the rules belong to the platform, and they change. It is also close to invisible on Google—someone searching “bakery near me” will not be shown your Instagram grid. And it is built to keep people scrolling, not to send them to book or buy.
So if Instagram is your only presence, you are renting your entire business on someone else's land, and you are missing everyone who searches rather than scrolls.
What a website does that Instagram doesn't
A website is yours. It shows up in Google searches, it works for people who are not on Instagram, and it can be built around one clear action—book, order, call, enquire. It is the difference between being browsed and being chosen.
The cheapest version that works
You do not need a big site. One fast, mobile-friendly page with what you do, where you are, your hours, a few real photos and a clear way to contact or book is enough to start, and it gives Google a consistent, ownable source about you.
Keep Instagram for discovery, add a simple page for conversion and search, and point each at the other. If you want a view of where the gaps are first, that is what our free visibility review is for.