Who this is for
If any of these resonate, you're in the right place.
What would it mean to walk into every leadership meeting knowing your digital presence is covered?
What could you focus on if website operations weren't the thing quietly draining your capacity?
What would it look like to have a web partner your institution never has to replace?
How much of your strategic bandwidth goes toward managing a vendor relationship that should be managing itself?
What does it cost your institution when the people responsible for the website keep changing?
What would it mean to have continuity that doesn't depend on who's in the seat?
The problem
There's always something wrong. You just don't always know it yet.
Your team keeps the communications running, the enrollment pages live, the event calendars updated, and the department sites from embarrassing anyone. You do this with two or three people, a backlog that never gets shorter, and a CMS that became your problem when the person who understood it left for a private-sector salary.
The accessibility audit arrived six weeks before the semester started. A security patch was three versions behind and nobody noticed until it mattered. Something broke the night before a major announcement and the agency took 48 hours to respond. The last redesign was done by a shop that has since been acquired, handed off twice, and now doesn't return emails.
You're not behind because you're disorganized. You're behind because the scope of what a small higher-ed marketing team is responsible for has grown faster than the headcount ever did. What you need isn't another ticket system. It's a team that already knows your site and tells you what needs to happen before you have to ask.
The solution
We're the technical team your institution doesn't have to hire.
Bright Plum provides ongoing Drupal support — and WordPress where you need it — for higher education institutions. We handle security, compliance, performance, and platform stability so your team can focus on what it's actually there to do.
We don't wait for you to create tickets. We work from a documented playbook of best practices, improving your site's health across every pillar every month. You get a proactive partner who knows your site inside and out, not a vendor who starts from scratch every time something breaks.
How it works
Every engagement begins with a Website Risk Sprint.
Before we recommend a plan, we run a fixed-scope, fixed-price sprint across your sites. We work through the full playbook, score you on the six dimensions that decide whether your website is an asset or a liability, and hand you a prioritized roadmap of what needs attention and when. You keep that picture whether or not you continue with us.
If you do continue, the sprint shows which level of support actually fits — so your plan is based on evidence instead of a guess. Your sprint fee is credited toward your first month. The sprint is the diagnosis. The plans below are the treatment.
Core security patching, accessibility compliance, and uptime monitoring. The things that must never slip, handled.
Everything in Foundation, plus performance optimization and proactive improvement sprints that keep the site getting better.
Everything in Standard, plus custom development, platform integrations, and long-term roadmap planning.
Already a client with a bigger project in mind? We handle custom builds for existing relationships too.
Proof
How the Sjögren's Foundation reclaimed 10+ hours a week — and earned a 10/10 partner rating in 30 days
The Sjögren's Foundation had a small team, a Drupal site that needed constant attention, and no internal technical depth to give it. Bright Plum stabilized the platform and built the systems to keep it that way. They rated us 10 out of 10 — and have renewed every year since.
Client voices
Great technical work gets the job done. Clear communication is what makes clients stay.
"We're a small team, and we rely heavily on Bright Plum for their guidance and prioritization. Being able to hand off projects to a reliable partner is a huge asset to us."
Katie M. · Associate Vice President of Communications, Northland Pioneer College"Bright Plum provides consistent support, clear communication, and the technical expertise our team relies on."
Martha E. · Communications Manager, Smith College"We really depend on Bright Plum for proactive insights into security issues and their ability to jump quickly and unexpectedly on a problem."
Liz F. · Digital Marketing Manager, Sjögren's FoundationWhy not the alternatives
Large agencies don't want this work. Freelancers can't systematize it. An internal hire is one resignation away from a crisis.
Big Drupal agencies
They build enterprise platforms. When the project ends, so does their attention — you get handed to a junior account manager or let go. We know, because several of our clients came to us that way.
Freelancers
Flexible and often affordable, but a single point of failure. One sick day, one better offer, one distracted month, and your site is on its own.
An internal hire
One person's knowledge — which leaves when they do. Higher-ed web jobs pay 30–40% below market. The turnover rate proves it.
Bright Plum is a team. We document everything. We work from a playbook. And we stay.
Let's see if we're a fit.
Most of our clients found us when something had already gone wrong. We'd rather catch it before that happens to you. Book a 30-minute call and we'll take a look at where your site stands.