He shouldn’t stay on M1 as it’s EOL, he should upgrade to something… Magento 2 is a steep learning curve, but it’s a great platform that will probably cover his needs. Unless he’s a strong developer it’s probably too much for him to tackle. Shopify is a bit saner as far as that goes. I would not build it from scratch, e-commerce has a ton of moving pieces you probably haven’t considered all the complexity.
Doug Hatcher
Enterprise architecture and tech junkie