As someone non-tech How do you handle website maintenance?

I work at a company that uses a 3rd party dev team and have contracted freelance programmers.

I like working with dedicated teams because they are always available, have more resources, and have typically developed more so they don't have to figure things out as much. Also, it takes a lot of time for a developer to get in-tune with your product, brand, site structure, etc so there's a big benefit to staying with the same one.

Cost can really vary depending on the team you choose. For example, you could hire a team in India for $15/hr or a team in New York for $300+/hr. It all depends on the expertise you need (do you just need programming, or do you need UI/UX skills, design, SEO, etc), and how good you are at project management.

A cheaper team from a different country will not be as organized, their testing practices are limited, and they will lack foresight. This means you need to give explicit direction, manage progress and deadlines, do a LOT of testing yourself, and really think ahead since they don't. If your time is really valuable to you then a cheaper team/freelancer is not going to work because you will need to be heavily involved.

Support packages/maintenance is typically going to be 20-100 hours/month depending on project scope and how much time with the devs you need. Hours not used during your monthly maintenance are typically applied to dev work.

Hopefully this helps some!