Who provides IT support for a marketing agency in Dallas?
I do. I am Anthony Omini, the owner of Cross River Tech, a small IT company in Dallas, and I support marketing and creative agencies: Macs and PCs side by side, storage that handles video and raw photography, disciplined access to client ad and social accounts, temporary logins for freelancers, backups of work in progress, and an internet connection with enough upload speed to deliver a cut without waiting all afternoon.
Answered by Anthony Omini, Cross River Tech, Dallas
Key takeaways
- Agencies are mixed environments by nature, and a provider who treats the Macs as somebody else's problem will support half your business.
- Client account access is the agency-specific risk: you hold logins to accounts that belong to other companies, and one shared password can put several clients at once at risk.
- Media files break ordinary file sharing early, so decide on purpose what lives on fast local storage, what lives in the cloud and what gets archived.
- Freelancers and contractors need access that expires by design rather than access somebody has to remember to remove.
- Upload speed, not download speed, is what decides whether delivering a video eats an afternoon, and most small-office internet plans are wildly unbalanced.
Who provides IT support for a marketing agency in Dallas?
I do. I am Anthony Omini, the owner of Cross River Tech in Dallas. I support small businesses across the metroplex, and marketing and creative agencies are a good fit for how I work, because agencies want a person who actually knows their setup rather than a call center that reads a script and asks if the computer is plugged in.
An agency is not a normal office with prettier furniture. The files are much bigger. Half the machines are Macs. Work happens in bursts around deadlines, so the worst possible day for something to break is the day it always breaks. And, unusually, the agency holds keys to systems it does not own: client ad accounts, analytics, social profiles, content platforms and sometimes client email. That last point changes the security conversation completely.
What I typically take on for an agency:
- Every machine, Mac and PC, managed, updated, protected and supported by the same company.
- Storage and file organization that fits video, raw photography and layered design files without making people wait.
- Access to client accounts handled with a password manager, proper permissions and a leaver process that actually closes doors.
- Freelancer and contractor access that is quick to grant and expires on its own.
- Backups of work in progress, not just finished deliverables, because the painful loss is always the unsaved half-finished thing.
- The office network: internet sized for uploads, a business firewall, Wi-Fi that holds up when everyone is on a video call, and a separate guest network for clients.
- Email and identity on Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, with multi-factor authentication properly enforced.
Support is remote first, which is faster for a team that is half in the office and half elsewhere, with onsite visits by appointment. Tell me how your agency is set up and I will tell you what I would change first.
What does a creative agency need from IT that an ordinary office does not?
Bigger files, mixed platforms, external accounts and a lot of temporary people. Those four differences explain almost every IT frustration an agency has, and they are the reason generic small-business IT support fits an agency badly.
| Need | Ordinary office | Marketing or creative agency |
|---|---|---|
| File sizes | Documents and spreadsheets | Video, raw photography, layered design files, whole project folders in gigabytes |
| Platforms | All Windows, usually | Macs for creative, PCs for account and analytics work, both needing the same access |
| Accounts | Its own systems only | Dozens of client-owned ad, analytics, social and content accounts |
| People | Employees | Employees plus freelancers, contractors and the occasional client user |
| Internet | Download-heavy | Upload-heavy, all day, in large bursts |
| Worst day | Email is down | A deadline, a corrupted working file and no version history |
None of this requires exotic technology. It requires someone designing for the actual work instead of applying a template built for an accounting office. The rest of this page goes through the parts that cause agencies the most trouble, in the order I usually fix them.
How do you run Macs and PCs in the same agency?
By managing both properly and refusing to let one platform become the unsupported half of the office. Nearly every agency I meet runs both, for good reasons. Design, video and motion work gravitates to the Mac. Account management, media buying, analytics and finance tend to live on Windows. The mix itself is not the problem. The problem is when only the PCs are managed and the Macs have been quietly running whatever they like for years.
What I do on both platforms equally:
- Enroll every machine in management, so I can see its health, push updates on a schedule, install software remotely and wipe it if it goes missing.
- One identity for everyone, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace with multi-factor authentication, so email, calendars and shared files behave identically at any desk.
- Endpoint protection on the Macs too. The idea that a Mac does not need it stopped being true a long time ago.
- Shared folders that open with the same path on both, which matters when a file has linked assets in it.
- A short standard list of docks, adapters and monitors that work on both platforms, because peripherals generate more support calls than software does.
- Sensible specification at purchase. Memory cannot be added to most Macs later, so anyone editing video or working in large layered files gets specified generously the first time.
Where a Mac user needs an occasional Windows-only tool, remoting into a spare office PC is usually cheaper and tidier than buying a second machine. All of this sits in the same monthly plan with no Mac surcharge; the identity and licensing side is on the Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace support page.
Where should big media files and shared storage live?
Active work on fast storage in the office, delivery and collaboration in the cloud, finished projects in an archive, and the rule written down so nobody has to guess. Agencies generate data faster than almost any other small business. One video shoot can produce more than a law firm produces in a year, and the usual result is a full shared drive, a sync client that never finishes and four copies of the same folder with different suffixes.
| What it is | Where it belongs | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Video and photo work in progress | Fast storage in the office, wired to editing desks | Editing over a sync folder or a home connection is painful and risks corruption |
| Design files and documents | Cloud storage with version history | Modest size, needs to be reachable from anywhere and recoverable per version |
| Camera originals | Office storage plus a backup copy before anything is deleted from cards | Unrepeatable, and the moment of highest risk is the card wipe |
| Client deliverables | Cloud, shared by expiring link | Links can be revoked; email attachments cannot |
| Closed projects | Archive storage, indexed by client and job | Rarely opened, must still exist when a client asks a year later |
| Brand assets and templates | Read-only shared folder | Everyone uses the current version and nobody edits the master |
Two habits make the structure hold: one naming convention for project folders that everyone uses, and a monthly move of finished jobs into the archive so active storage does not silently fill. Editing directly over a sync client is the single most common cause of the mysterious corrupted project file, and moving that work onto proper local storage usually fixes a problem the agency assumed was the software's fault. The deeper version of this conversation, including hardware sizing, is in file servers, shared storage and backups for design firms.
How should an agency handle access to client accounts and passwords?
With a shared password manager, per-person access, multi-factor authentication everywhere and a strong preference for being invited to a client's account rather than holding their password. This is the part of agency IT that carries the most risk and gets the least attention. An agency holds logins to systems that belong to other companies, sometimes dozens of them, and a single reused password in a spreadsheet can expose several clients at once.
What good looks like:
- No shared spreadsheet, ever. A business password manager with per-person and per-team access, so you can see who can reach what and revoke it in one place.
- Ask to be added as a user on the client's own account for advertising, analytics and business platforms, rather than logging in as the client. Their account stays theirs, your access is named, and removing it later is clean for both sides.
- Multi-factor authentication on every account, with the codes held in the password manager so they are not stuck on a single phone when its owner is on vacation.
- Named agency accounts, never a generic login that five people share, because a shared login makes it impossible to know who did what.
- A quarterly review of which client accounts you still hold access to. Agencies routinely still have access to accounts belonging to clients who left two years ago, which is a liability rather than an asset.
- Offboarding that rotates credentials, not just removes a person. Anything a departing employee could see should be changed, especially anything belonging to a client.
- A written note in your client agreement about how you store their credentials, because sophisticated clients now ask.
The underlying protection is the agency's own email, since email resets everything else. Multi-factor authentication, email security that flags outside senders and lookalike domains, and alerting on suspicious sign-ins are the baseline. I cover that setup in Microsoft 365 security for a small business and set it up as part of cybersecurity, backup and disaster recovery.
How do you give freelancers and contractors temporary access?
By making the access expire by design, rather than relying on somebody remembering to remove it. Agencies bring in freelance designers, editors, developers, copywriters and photographers constantly, often for a single project, sometimes for a single week. Every one of them needs access to something, and the person who granted it is usually busy with the deadline that caused the hire.
The pattern I set up:
- A guest account rather than a full staff account, which costs less and is easier to keep separate from internal systems.
- Access to one project folder, not the whole drive. This is the single biggest improvement most agencies can make and it takes a few minutes to arrange.
- An expiry date set at the moment access is granted, so the default is that it ends. Guest access in Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace both support this.
- Links that expire for handing over files, instead of open links that live in an email thread forever.
- Multi-factor authentication on guest accounts too, since a freelancer's laptop is outside your control entirely.
- No client credentials shared with contractors. If a freelancer needs to work in a client's platform, they get their own named access to it.
- A monthly list of active guests that someone actually reads, so the review is a five-minute habit rather than an annual archaeology project.
Done this way, onboarding a freelancer takes minutes and offboarding takes none, because it happens on its own. The same discipline applies to employees leaving; if that is a live problem right now, an employee left with the company laptop and accounts covers the urgent version.
How do you back up work in progress, not just finished files?
By backing up the storage the work actually lives on, keeping version history, and testing a restore rather than trusting a green tick. The losses that hurt an agency are almost never the archived, delivered, invoiced job. They are the edit that was three days in, the layered file that got flattened and saved over, and the folder somebody dragged into the wrong place at eleven at night.
What I put in place:
- Office storage with snapshots, so an overwritten file comes back from an hour ago in about a minute, without a full restore.
- Version history in the cloud with a long enough retention window that a problem noticed two weeks later is still fixable.
- A separate backup of the cloud accounts. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace protect against hardware failure, not against deletion. Losing a whole shared drive to a well-meaning cleanup is a common way to find this out.
- One immutable copy that cannot be altered or deleted for a set period, which is the defense against ransomware.
- Camera cards backed up before they are wiped, as a written rule on shoot days.
- Laptop backups for the people who keep working locally, because somebody always does.
- A tested restore at least once a year, where a real file comes back while someone watches.
The last one is the only proof any of it works. I fold it into a yearly review, which is described in the annual IT check-up every Dallas office should run.
How much internet speed does an agency actually need?
Enough upload speed to move your largest routine delivery without it becoming an event, which usually means a plan with symmetrical speeds rather than the fastest download number on the advert. Agencies are the clearest example of a business where the marketing number on an internet plan is the wrong number to look at. Everyone else downloads. You upload: video to review platforms, photo sets to clients, backups to the cloud, all while a dozen people are on video calls.
What I look at when sizing an agency connection:
- Upload speed first. A plan advertising a large download figure with a small upload figure will feel slow for your work no matter what the headline says.
- Symmetrical service where it is available at the building, which is usually fiber. Availability in Dallas varies address by address, so it has to be checked rather than assumed.
- A second connection for failover for an agency that cannot miss a delivery, with a firewall that switches over automatically.
- Traffic shaping on the firewall so a large upload does not make everyone else's video calls unusable.
- Wired desks for editors. Wi-Fi is fine for laptops and terrible for moving a hundred gigabytes.
- Enough access points, placed properly, so the conference room works during a client presentation.
- A separate guest network for visiting clients, isolated from your storage and your printers.
If the office is being fitted out or renovated, this is the moment to get the cabling right, because adding drops afterwards costs several times more. I run Cat6 myself as part of data cabling and IT room setup, so the wiring and the network can be done by the same company that supports them afterwards.
What does IT support cost for a small agency, and how do you start?
Either a fixed monthly fee per user or per device, or hourly with no contract, and I will tell you which fits after one conversation. Most agencies I talk to have between five and thirty people, which is the size where a full-time IT hire makes no sense but paying hourly for every problem gets slow and expensive because nobody is watching in between.
| Managed IT plan | Hourly, no contract | |
|---|---|---|
| Billing | Per user or per device per month, month to month, cancel anytime | By the hour, one-hour minimum |
| Price | Quoted after a short conversation | $100 remote and $150 onsite in business hours; $150 remote and $225 onsite after hours, weekends and holidays |
| Includes | Updates for Macs and PCs, unlimited remote support, onsite at no extra charge when remote cannot fix it, antivirus and email security, managed backup, and management of internet, firewall, switches, access points and printers | Whatever you called about |
| Best for | An agency with deadlines, client accounts and data it cannot lose | A one-off project such as setting up storage or sorting out the password mess |
For context, small-business managed IT in the Dallas market is commonly quoted somewhere around $100 to $175 per user per month depending on what is included. That is a typical market range rather than my price, which comes after I know what you actually run. Hourly versus monthly IT support works through where the crossover sits.
To start, tell me how many people you have, how the Mac and PC split falls, where the files live, which client platforms you hold access to and what annoyed you most this month. I work with agencies across Dallas and the surrounding metroplex onsite, and support businesses remotely anywhere in Texas. Send me those details and you will get a plain-language plan and an honest quote, usually the same day.
Questions people ask
Who does IT for creative agencies in Dallas?
Cross River Tech does. I am Anthony Omini, its owner and the person you deal with, and I support marketing and creative agencies across the metroplex. That means managing Macs and PCs equally, sizing storage for video and photography, bringing order to client account access and passwords, setting up expiring access for freelancers, backing up work in progress and making sure the internet has the upload speed the work needs.
Can you support Macs as well as PCs?
Yes, and fully rather than grudgingly. Every machine on either platform is enrolled in the same management and security tools, signs in to the same Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace accounts with multi-factor authentication, and opens the same shared folders with the same paths. Endpoint protection runs on the Macs too. There is no Mac surcharge and no second provider for one side of the room.
How should an agency store passwords for client ad and social accounts?
In a business password manager with per-person access and multi-factor codes stored alongside, never a shared spreadsheet. Better still, ask to be added as a named user on the client's own account instead of holding their password, so their account stays theirs and your access is clean to remove. Review which client accounts you still hold access to every quarter.
What is the best way to give a freelancer access to one project?
A guest account with access to that project folder only, an expiry date set at the moment it is granted, multi-factor authentication turned on and file links that expire. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace both support this. Never hand a contractor a client's credentials; if they need to work inside a client platform, arrange their own named access to it.
Why do video files keep getting corrupted when editors work from the shared drive?
Usually because they are editing directly over a cloud sync client, which was never designed for a program writing constantly to a large open file. Move active editing onto fast storage in the office, wired to the editing desks, and use the cloud for delivery and collaboration instead. Agencies often assume this is a software fault when it is a storage design problem.
What internet speed does a marketing agency need?
Look at upload speed rather than the headline download number, because your work sends large files out all day. Symmetrical service, usually fiber, is the target where it is available at your address in Dallas. Add traffic shaping so one big upload does not ruin everyone's video calls, and wire the editing desks rather than leaving them on Wi-Fi.
