One of the most common things I hear from organizations with internal IT teams: “We already have people who handle the website.”

Sometimes that’s true. More often, IT handles the server and the logins, and the website itself — the content, the performance, the user experience, the integrations — is nobody’s full-time job. It just floats.

What IT support actually covers

Your IT department is responsible for infrastructure: servers, networks, security policies, email systems, device management, and keeping internal tools running. They’re essential. In most organizations they’re also stretched thin.

When something breaks on the website — a form stops working, a plugin conflicts with another, the site slows to a crawl — IT can often get involved to fix it. But that’s reactive. And it’s not their core job.

What web support actually covers

Web support is proactive. It’s someone who owns the website as their primary responsibility — not as a side task between helpdesk tickets.

That includes:

  • Keeping plugins, themes, and the CMS updated before they become problems
  • Monitoring performance and catching slowdowns before visitors do
  • Managing content updates without pulling in IT for every change
  • Coordinating with vendors, developers, and platform providers
  • Building or improving the processes your team uses to manage the site
  • Keeping the site aligned with how your organization actually operates today

They’re complementary, not competitive

I’ve worked alongside IT departments at several institutions. The relationship works well when roles are clear: IT owns the infrastructure, I own the website. They handle the server, I handle what runs on it.

IT teams tend to appreciate having someone who handles web requests directly, so those tickets stop landing on their queue. And organizations get a website that’s actually maintained — not just technically operational.

The gap most organizations don’t notice until something goes wrong

The risk isn’t that your IT team is doing a bad job. It’s that web support falls in a gap between IT’s scope and marketing’s capacity. Nobody owns it, so nobody’s watching it. That’s usually fine until a security issue surfaces, a major plugin breaks something, or a prospective client lands on a page that hasn’t been touched in three years.

I work with organizations that have internal IT teams and need someone to own the web layer — without overlap or conflict. If that sounds like your situation, let’s talk →