I'm preparing to launch a web site, developed with CGI::Application. The site will support user accounts (registration, login, etc), use database-backed sessions to maintain state, shopping cart info, etc. As a result, every page hit will result in a cgi script being run.

Most web hosting companies assume you only need to upload HTML files. I've had a hard time finding companies that allow CGI scripts like I need. At this point, I'm seriously considering the company that hosts perlmonks - but their terms of service state that no user may have more than 8 processes running on the server at any one time. For me, that means if I have 8 customers all click on a link at the same time - boom! Right?

Note that I'm looking at the $30/month plan. In order to get a dedicated server running with mod_perl enabled, the price jumps to $250/month. That's more than I can afford, at least initially.

So - what are my alternatives? Find another web host? I expect most hosts will have similar limits. Use PHP (the horror!). What have other people done?

I've actually done a lot of webapp development - but always at work, within the company intranet, where I had root access to the web servers, etc. This will be my first personal website, using a hosting company, and it seems really hard to do anything with all the restrictions. Of course, I understand the need for security, sharing resources, etc. I'm assuming that some of you here do web development using perl, so - any suggestions?

Thanks!