>Got a friend of mine who is going to start a small business. Would like recommendations for a place to host it. Nice if they have website templates and built-in file transfers. No need for eCommerce and all that for now.

We are using Web.com - they are the latest owner of the hosting service that we started with 10 years ago (I don't remember what the company originally was).

Not free, but I don't think we've had more that 6 days worth of downtime during the 10 years.