"Should I just use Linktree, or build my own site?" If you've spent more than 10 minutes searching for an answer, you've noticed every blog post is a thinly-disguised pitch for a tool. This one isn't. We'll tell you when Linktree is genuinely the right call, when your own site wins, and how to know which one you actually need today — without paying for the wrong thing.
TL;DR — the decision in three lines
Use Linktree (or a similar link-in-bio tool) when you have under 1,000 followers, no clear primary offer to sell, and you're testing what works. Use your own website when you're trying to rank in Google, sell more than two products, capture leads, or build a brand someone might link to. Use both when you have a clear primary funnel (your website) and you need a temporary social-bio bridge to it. Most "best Linktree alternatives" lists skip this question entirely, which is why people end up paying for the wrong thing.
Why this question keeps coming up
Linktree pioneered the category — a single page, multiple links, easy to update. It's free to start, takes 90 seconds to set up, and solves the "Instagram only allows one link in bio" problem instantly. Eight years later, the category has multiplied (Beacons, Stan Store, Carrd, Bio Sites, dozens more), but the underlying decision hasn't changed. The right answer depends on what you're trying to do — and most blogs avoid the question because they earn affiliate revenue from any answer that involves "use a tool".
When Linktree (or any link-in-bio) actually wins
There's a real, narrow case where a hosted link-in-bio is the right tool. It looks like this:
You're under 1,000 followers and still figuring out your audience. A landing page gets less than 5 visitors a day. A custom domain costs $12/year. A website costs at minimum $0 (free GitHub Pages) or realistically $20–50/month with hosting + domain. At your traffic level, the time to set up and maintain a site doesn't pay back yet. A link-in-bio gets you something live in 10 minutes.
Your "offer" is genuinely a list of equally-weighted links. A creator who posts on YouTube, Substack, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Medium genuinely has 5 destinations they want to send people to, ordered by recency. That's the original Linktree use case and it still works.
You'll change links weekly. A merch drop, a new podcast episode, a Patreon tier change. If your top link changes more than once a week, the convenience of editing one button in a hosted tool beats the friction of pushing a website change.
You're testing what your audience clicks. Most link-in-bio tools have built-in click analytics. Before you build a real funnel, knowing whether your audience taps "buy my course" 5x more than "subscribe to my newsletter" is genuinely useful intel.
When your own website wins (this is most businesses)
For anyone building a business — as opposed to a personal brand managing 5 distribution channels — your own domain is almost always the better play. Here's why, in plain terms:
SEO compounds. Linktree pages don't rank. If you spend two years building content on a Linktree URL, you've spent two years building Linktree's domain authority, not yours. Every backlink, every share, every post about your business that links to linktr.ee/yourname is a deposit into someone else's bank account. Your own domain captures that equity. By month 24, the difference is usually 10–50× more organic traffic on the owned-domain side.
You can't rank a Linktree page in Google. A linktr.ee/yourname URL has near-zero ability to rank for "your service in your city" or "your name". You'd need someone to type your handle exactly, which means it works only for traffic you've already earned somewhere else.
You can't capture leads properly. Linktree's free tier doesn't let you capture emails. Even paid tiers integrate awkwardly with email tools. A 5-page WordPress site with a contact form captures real leads, with full data, into your CRM.
You can't sell more than a couple of things. Hosted link-in-bio tools handle 1–3 products well. By product 5, the page becomes a wall of buttons that converts at 1%. A real e-commerce or services site can have categories, search, filters, and proper checkout flow — and converts at 3–5×.
You can't build a brand. A custom URL that says yourbrand.com is part of your brand. A linktr.ee/yourbrand URL says "we couldn't justify $12/year." Customers notice. Partners notice. Investors notice.
Platform risk. Linktree (or any tool) can change pricing, change features, get acquired, or shut down. Two friends in our network had to migrate twice in three years when their chosen tools pivoted. Your own domain doesn't pivot.
When the smart move is "both"
For most growing businesses, the actual answer is both — but used differently than people expect.
Your website is the destination — your homepage, your service pages, your blog, your contact form, the place that ranks in Google and captures qualified leads. Your link-in-bio (if you keep one) is a temporary bridge from your social profiles to specific, current campaigns: today's promotion, this week's article, the demo you're running this month. As soon as the campaign ends, the link rotates.
In this configuration, the link-in-bio is a small piece of social-traffic plumbing. It's not where you live; it's a forwarder. That's fine. But it's a different mental model than "Linktree is my website".
A real example: a Tampa salon owner who almost made the wrong call
A salon owner with 4,200 Instagram followers asked us last summer: "Should I upgrade to Linktree's $9/mo paid plan or build a website?" She'd been using free Linktree for two years. Her bookings came almost entirely from Instagram DMs. She did about $14,000/month, mostly from regulars.
We mapped her traffic: ~600 Instagram-bio clicks/month, about 20 of which converted to a booking. Her three top destinations: an Instagram-DM booking link (60% of clicks), an Apple Pay tip jar (25%), and a generic "services" PDF (15%). Linktree was technically working.
But her 1-year goal was to add two stylists and double monthly revenue. To do that she needed: (1) Google ranking for "balayage Tampa", (2) lead capture for a "first-visit special" email list, (3) a real services + pricing page she could send to new clients. None of that is what Linktree does. We built her a 5-page WordPress site with a domain, on-page local SEO, a real contact form, and an integrated booking calendar. Cost: about $1,800 to build, $35/month to maintain. Six months in, organic Google traffic was bringing 18 new-client bookings a month — incremental revenue around $5,400/month. The site paid for itself in seven weeks.
The lesson isn't "Linktree is bad". The lesson is: when your business has growth ambitions that require ranking, capturing, or converting, no link-in-bio tool will get you there. And the longer you delay the move, the more equity you've poured into someone else's domain.
Common mistakes when picking between the two
Treating Linktree as a "free website". It isn't. It's a single-page link list. Calling it a website conditions you to settle for what it can't do.
Buying the $9/mo Linktree paid tier hoping it solves your problems. The paid tier adds branding, links analytics, and a few integrations. It doesn't add SEO, lead capture, or a custom domain on lower tiers. If your problem is "I need leads from Google", paying $108/year for a slightly fancier link list doesn't fix it.
Building a 25-page custom-coded website when a 1-page site would do. The opposite mistake. If you genuinely have one offer ("book a call") and a tiny audience, a 1-page Carrd site or a single landing page is plenty. Don't spend $5,000 on a 25-page WordPress build when you don't have the content yet.
Forgetting about platform risk. Whatever you pick, plan for migration. Don't build your audience entirely on a platform you don't own — that's true for Linktree, Substack, YouTube, and Instagram alike. Always have an email list and a domain you control.
A simple decision framework
Pick the row that describes you most accurately:
- Less than 1,000 followers, no clear offer yet, just want a presence: Free Linktree (or Bio Sites by Squarespace, also free). Move up when you have a real offer.
- A creator with 5+ distribution channels, no e-commerce: Free Linktree or Beacons. Skip building a site for now.
- A creator with a single primary product (course, coaching, paid newsletter): A 1-page Carrd or a single Substack/Beehiiv landing page. Skip Linktree entirely.
- A local business (salon, restaurant, plumber, dentist) trying to rank in Google: A real website with a custom domain, on-page local SEO, contact form. Skip Linktree.
- An e-commerce business with 5+ products: Shopify or WooCommerce. Use Linktree only as a temporary bio-link bridge.
- A B2B service business doing $100K+/year: A proper website with case studies, lead capture, and SEO. Linktree is irrelevant.
If you fall into rows 4–6 and you're currently using Linktree as your "website": you're leaving real revenue on the table every month you wait.
How Cacele fits
If your decision is "I need my own website but I don't want a 6-week WordPress project", that's literally what we built First Page for. It's a single platform that lets you ship a link-in-bio page, a multi-page website, and a sales funnel — without writing code, without paying $200+/month for separate tools, and on your own custom domain from day one. Most users start with a 1-page version and grow into a full site as their business does. If you'd rather have a team build it for you while you focus on running your business, WebElevated, our digital agency, builds custom sites with local SEO and lead capture wired in.
Whichever path you take: own your domain. The traffic you build there is yours forever. The traffic you build on someone else's tool isn't.