These days when friends tell me they want a personal website, it’s often just a single-page profile that they’re really after rather than something pricier and more complicated.
In the past there were services like http://flavors.me/ but it seems to have fallen by the wayside. This looks like a decent option to point friends toward if they’re not looking for a blog or want to take baby steps toward that. Incidentally, I came across Carrd through Chris Ferdinandi’s Vanilla JS List which features organisations which favour Vanilla JavaScript over JS frameworks.