Having your own website gives you total control over its content. Control is a huge advantage. You decide which advertisements, sponsors, links, logos and text go onto your website. You have the final say about what your website looks like. In comparison, Facebook has ultimate control over your page. Facebook is a business, like yours, that needs revenue to stay afloat. It earns revenue by selling ad space, gaining sponsorships and placing content on any of its member's pages. By agreeing to have an account and participate in its social network, you give the site permission to place subject-appropriate sponsors ads, widgets, links, logos and other content on your page.

If you have your own website, you control which pictures get uploaded to your site. If you sell products online, this can be particularly important. Many potential customers want to see what they are buying before purchasing. Facebook has image guidelines which you must strictly abide by. The site can also place whatever images it desires on your account page. This is part of your agreement for becoming a member.

Operating your own website lets you decide how potential customers can contact you. An efficient website developer understands that having multiple contact methods plays a crucial role for staying in touch with customers. You determine whether you want email, telephone, chat, etc. In contrast, Facebook determines this for you. Before the new timeline took effect, you could reference contact information in your company header image. This was a very convenient way for potential customers to share your business information with their friends, 'like' your business and contact you for more information. The new rules specifically prohibit this. When a visitor clicks on your company image, they will not be able to conveniently receive any contact information or do any of these online tasks. Multiple clicks are needed to obtain this valuable data.

Online privacy is a main concern of many Internet users. Operating your own website gives you complete control over this. You set your privacy settings and determine who sees your company information. Depending upon how comfortable you feel about sharing information with everyone, you can set your privacy from high to low, ranging from third parties to direct consumers.
If you operate only a Facebook page, you may automatically be losing potential customers who place privacy as their number one concern. One of the main disadvantages about using Facebook is its potential to be hacked. Member accounts can be spammed without the user knowing it. Only when information shows up on another's account, can a person or business become aware of it.

Your account information can be shared by Facebook with companies you are unfamiliar with. You may agree with its privacy policy, but you do not know who it shares your information with. This does not settle comfortably with some users. Plus, Facebook continually changes its privacy policies, leaving it up to their members to change it back to where it started. This can be frustrating and time-consuming for many members.

Even though we live in a viral, social networking world where users share information instantaneously, not everyone engages in social media. Not all consumers have smartphones or handheld devices that allow them to share information with their social network. Not everyone belongs to a variety of social networking sites. Another advantage of having your own website, outside of Facebook, involves exposure. There will always be those potential customers who prefer going directly to the source of information, that being a company's website. A well-developed website will contain all the information a customer needs to know about the business.

Facebook is considered indirect exposure. Visitors must go to your page in order to click on your website link and obtain more information.