In short
LinkedIn helps people find you. Your own website helps them understand you. A platform profile puts everyone into the same format, while a few simple pages you own give you room to show what you have actually done, and they do not disappear when a platform changes direction.
Guillermo Rauch, the CEO of Vercel, made a point recently that stuck with me. His argument was that what you actually need is not another profile on a platform, but a page on your own website describing and linking to the things you have shipped.
It reminded me of a module I did at university on online presence development. Part of it was building a personal website. At the time I probably just saw it as coursework, but I have had some version of a personal site ever since.
Usually not perfectly up to date
Mine has rarely been polished. Sometimes it has been a few links, some projects, and random things I was messing around with. It has gone stale more than once.
But I have always liked having a small corner of the internet that is actually mine. Something that does not disappear when a platform changes its mind about what it wants to be.
Everyone gets the same format
LinkedIn is useful. It genuinely helps people find you, and I would not tell anyone to delete their profile. The limitation is that it puts everyone into the same format. The same headline, the same sections, the same layout, the same everything.
A website gives you a bit more room. You can show what you have done without squeezing it into the shape somebody else designed for a few hundred million other people.
It is not one against the other
I do not really see it as LinkedIn versus a website. It is more that LinkedIn helps people find you, and your website helps them understand you a bit better. One is discovery. The other is depth.
Which is probably why I still think simple websites are underrated. Not big rebuilds, not a six month project. A few pages that load quickly, explain what you do, and belong to you.
That is most of what I build for people now. If you want the practical version of this, I have written about what a small business website actually costs, or you can see the work I take on.