You don’t need hosting to learn the basics, I’d consider one of the local development tools used for running it locally like warden or valet. You could also run it locally with docker, which would help you on your path to eventually hosting it online with something like digital ocean.
Doug Hatcher
Enterprise architecture and tech junkie
I’ve had several clients on Nexcess SIP servers, and they really aren’t that bad for M1 hosting. You’re a bit confined with what you can do yourself, but I never ran into anything unsolvable, and their guys are decent if you need help. The hosting service itself is fine for the low-end imho. Webscale is offering post-EOL support for M1, they’re probably worth considering too.
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.