Hello,
A shared hosting solution should be more then enough for your friend to start up, I will go through each of your requirements and try to help as much as I can
However my 1st tip is avoid any EIG Hosting brands, as well as any "unlimited" offers as these will cause your friend more pain then its worth.
Sometimes cheap doesn't go down well, however as the web site will start off small a basic package should be more then enough to get your friend started.
cPanel is a popular control panel, I would say most hosting providers offer this but its always best to check before you sign up. The good thing about cPanel is its so user friendly which would be ideal for your friend.
We use RvsiteBuilder that we offer to our clients free and couldn't recommend it enough, can be slightly time consuming however like cPanel its user friendly. There are other site builders out there that we've tested but so far our personal favourite is RvsiteBuilder
All hosting providers have some restrictions in place, this is to protect their clients as well as their servers. As already mentioned I wouldn't Imagen your friend even using close to some limits Web Hosting providers put in place. If he was going to sending out quite a lot of emails this could cause an issue as most hosts limit this to 200 emails per hour per cPanel account.
We all like freebies, We are rolling out to our servers some free SEO tools to help which would be handy for your friend.
As for domain recommendation, I would recommend something to do with the local area/town name as this would help with online searching.
Hope this helped, if you have any question please fire away
Best regards,
Matthew