"Is it common to see hosting companies that say they offer perl and then not deliver on their promise? I mean that's the only reason I chose these hosts, because they included perl in the list."

I've not looked in a long time, not since it's become cost effective to spin up my own server and deal with everything myself. Look at companies like Scaleway, Digital Ocean (update: or pair). Some of the low tier hosts advertise Perl, meaning they have an interpreter installed on the machine, others offer better perl support (sometimes via cpannel or similar). As far as managed services go, you tend to get what you pay for.

Yes it is common, and has been for many years. Shared hosting companies' customers are not by and large Perl developers. So they don't worry much about providing Perl support.

Get a Linode ... they have inexpensive, highly reliable virtual servers, great documentation; you will love it when you are in charge of your own Perl installation!

This is a free service offering Perl: http://zettahost.com . for a paid service i would also consider the one hosting this site : www.pair.com

A 4-core linux server with contabo costs only a few euros and offers unlimited transfers. and good service too so far

1dollar-webhosting.com…

You get what you pay for. Along those lines, 99.9% uptime implies 3½ days of down time and “guaranteed uptime” just means they may have to refund you $4 for the downtime throughout the summer and holidays.

As far as good budget hosts go, Dreamhost’s Perl support is fair. You need a Linode slice (as 1nickt suggests) or a Lightsail server or something similar if you expect to run persistent apps of any girth. It requires a big step up in skillset though.

You get what you pay for.

Generally true, although I'm aware of some hosters who charge a lot and are no better. Always try to talk to other customers and ex-customers for their experiences.

99.9% uptime implies 3½ days of down time

If you mean annually, then 99.9% uptime is only about 8 hours of downtime.

Agree that value isn’t always pegged to high cost but low cost in this realm is always tied to lower quality. Quite right about the three nines too. I shifted a decimal. :| 3½ days is two nines.

Seconding Dreamhost in that I've not been not satisfied with them (then again I don't run much there any more, and when I did it was mostly tiny rails backends).

The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.

The price of VPS hosting has come down so much lately that using regular web hosting for anything more complex than a static site or maybe a WordPress site seems a bad decision. For the cost of a couple of cups of coffee a month, you can get a host you can SSH into and manage your own perlbrew installation, so have total control over what modules are installed, which versions, etc. You can switch between different databases, etc, use git for deployment (just ssh in and git pull the latest code from the stable branch).

I have been using their services for over 20 years and highly recommend.

Is € 5 cheap enough for a virtualized Debian solution? See here for more.

The only completely free hosting service I found with full support for my own custom Perl programs that actually works, and that I have been using for many years is 100WebSpace. https://www.100webspace.com/web-hosting/free-plan/ It is also really cheap if you want to eliminate the banner ad at the top of the page. $0.99/month

Surprisingly, customer service has also always been excellent. Any questions or issues I've ever had over the years were always answered and resolved very quickly.

Formerly they also offered free sub-domains, but I think they have all been used up or taken for some time. The free subdomain I started with like 20 years ago is still working, but I recently tried registering for a friend and no free subdomains were available.

I have since moved up to a business plan, which has unlimited virtually everything, still quite reasonably priced at $9.95/month.

Tom

Edit: I'm afraid I may have to pull back the glowing endorsement somewhat. Recently I requested that an additional Perl module be installed on the server. I was informed that because it is a shared server, that would not be possible, and that I would need to buy a VPS which I could configure in whatever way I like.

My current business plan has unlimited domains and subdomains and unlimited bandwidth. The VPS only allows one domain.

To relocate half of my sites would cost upwards of $400/year. I'm not really prepared to do that just for one additional module. Is that really the only option?

I found, if I did want a VPS, it looks like there are much better deals, but I really didn't at this point. I don't really have the time to move all my sites and start over, having to install everything from scratch. A web server, database, email, all the one button installation for message boards, shopping carts, blogs, whatever, for one module?

How about just the one submodule I really need?

Not possible.

Well, I can probably use what I need anyway by installing it right into my program or referencing it locally some other way, but I'm actually quite disapointed.

There are over 3,000 modules pre- installed, but be sure to check they have what you need because apparently they will not install any additional modules.

Tom