You need somewhere to send people online: customers who find you on social media, someone who scans a code on your window, a person who typed your name into a search box. Two very different answers get suggested for that job. One is a bio-link page, the kind Linktree made popular: a single tidy page that lists your links. The other is a website on its own domain, built for your business and maintained over time. They can look like alternatives, but they are shaped for different jobs. This article compares them on the things that do not change with a pricing update or a new feature, so you can decide which one fits where you are now.
To keep this fair: a bio-link page is a real, useful thing, and a website is not automatically the right answer for everyone. The goal here is to match the tool to the job, not to declare a winner for every business.
The criteria that actually matter for a small business
Marketing pages tend to compare features and prices. Both of those move around, so they are a poor basis for a decision you will live with. The parts that stay put come from what each option fundamentally is. Six questions cover it, and you can run them against anything you are considering, including the two options here.
- The address people see. Whose name sits in the web address, and whose brand does the visitor notice around your content?
- Control of layout and words. Can you change how it looks and reads, or ask a person to, without waiting on a platform to allow it?
- A human on maintenance. Is anyone responsible for keeping it working, and do you know who that is?
- Built for you, or shared. Is what you have shaped around your business, or is it a template many others also use?
- What remains if it goes away. If the tool or the account disappeared, what would you still have and be able to move?
- The shape of the cost. Not the figure, the shape: a recurring subscription, a share of each sale, an hourly rate, or a build. The shape tells you what you are committing to.
Notice that none of these ask which one is cheaper or which has more buttons. They ask who is in control and what is durable. Keep them in mind through the two sections below.
The bio-link page (Linktree and similar)
A bio-link page solves a narrow, genuine problem: when you have only one link field, often in a social profile, and several places you want to send people, a bio-link page collects them on one screen.
- Simple and approachable: it typically needs no technical skill to put together, which is a real strength when you just want a working link hub.
- Made for the one-link problem: it fits neatly where a platform gives you a single link to work with and you want to offer a menu of choices.
- Low commitment: the cost shape is often a recurring subscription rather than a one-off build, which is a lighter kind of commitment to take on.
- The address is the platform's: your links live at a web address the platform owns, not one that carries your own name. That can quietly signal that your presence lives inside someone else's house.
- Limited room to shape it: control over the layout and wording is often bounded by what the tool offers, because it is designed as a compact page rather than a full site.
- It is part of a platform, not a property: a page inside someone else's service goes where that service goes. If the account or the platform ends, the page tends to end with it, and there is little to move elsewhere.
- Hard to be found on its own: a list of links inside a shared platform is not really structured to be discovered by someone searching for what you do, so it may do little to bring you new visitors.
A real website on its own domain (a done-for-you build)
A website built for your business sits on its own domain and is designed to be the destination, not just the doorway. In the done-for-you approach BBH takes, a human team maintains it after it is built, rather than leaving you alone with a template.
- Your name is the address: the visitor sees your business and your web address, with no other brand sharing the frame. Your own website on its own domain reads as a place that belongs to you.
- Built around your business: the layout and the words can be shaped to what you actually do, rather than fitting your business into a shared template.
- A human maintains it: things that need attention over time, security updates, small fixes, changes to your hours or services, can be handled by a person, which matters because a skipped update can leave a known security hole open.
- Room to grow: you can add pages and content over time, and a site of your own can be structured so people searching for what you offer may find you, though no one can promise a ranking.
- It can move: a website on its own domain can be moved to another host, so what you build is a property you can take with you rather than a page tied to one service.
- More involved than a single page: a real website is a bigger thing to set up and to look after than a link list, which is the honest trade for the control it gives.
- The cost shape is an ongoing service: you are paying for something made for your business and kept running over time, not renting a slot on a platform. It is a fuller commitment than a single link list, and can be more than you need if a link hub is truly all you want.
Which should you choose?
Match the option to the job in front of you.
A bio-link page fits when your presence is mostly on social platforms and you mainly need to route followers to a handful of destinations, or when you are testing an early idea and are not ready to commit to more. It does that job well, and using it for exactly that is a perfectly sensible choice.
A real website fits when you want people who do not already follow you to be able to find you, when your brand and your words matter to how customers judge you, and when you expect to grow and want a place that can grow with you. This is where a done-for-you build like BBH's is aimed: a site built for your business, on its own domain, kept running by a human team so you are not maintaining it alone.
Consider a worked case, clearly hypothetical. Imagine a florist who runs a busy social account and gets most orders through direct messages. Today, a bio-link page pointing followers to a phone number and an order form may be all that job needs. Now imagine the same florist wants people searching for arrangements in their town to find them, wants a gallery that looks like their shop and not a template, and wants someone else handling upkeep. At that point the link hub has reached the edge of what it is built to do, and a website of their own becomes the better match. The point is not that one is right and the other wrong. It is that the job changed.
The two are also not enemies. Plenty of businesses keep a bio-link page in their social profile and point one of its links at their website. The page routes social traffic; the site is the destination that can be found and grow.
Decide by the job, not by the label
Run the six questions above against your own situation before you decide. If you mainly need a menu of links for followers you already have, a bio-link page is a reasonable, honest choice. If you want a presence that carries your name, that you and a human team can shape and maintain, and that can be found by people who do not know you yet, a website on its own domain is built for that. The better question is not which tool is superior in the abstract, but which one fits the job your business actually needs done right now, and which one you can grow into as that job changes.