The #1 Perl Solution
Used By Enterprises
Get secure, cross-platform package management for Perl
We’re reimagining how you work with Perl.
With ActiveState Perl, Perl developers get access to:
- Security-first Perl package management
- A unified, cloud-based toolchain for Linux and Windows (macOS coming soon)
- Virtual environments for isolated working directories
- Pure Open Source licensing: cpan modules you install have just their original licensing
Perl package management that makes developers lives easier
ActiveState Perl is powered by the ActiveState Platform. It offers automated dependency management, distributed parallel cloud builds of dependencies from source, team collaboration tools, and a versatile CLI (our State Tool) —all without the need for build engineering or Windows and Linux expertise.
Virtual Environments
Keep your projects sandboxed on your machine with a cross-platform, universal virtual environment solution. Run multiple versions of Perl on your machine without worrying about dependency conflicts.
Identify & Resolve Security Vulnerabilities Faster
Shortcut the lengthy remediation process of investigating, rebuilding, retesting, and updating runtime environments. The ActiveState Platform lets you find vulnerabilities, fix them, and automatically rebuild a secure version of your Perl environment in minutes, decreasing Mean Time To Remediation (MTTR) from days to hours.
Versatile CLI
An all-new, open-source CLI (State Tool) lets you manage your environment directly from the terminal, easily integrate with your existing CI/CD pipelines, and keep your team synchronized across platforms.
Open Source Licensing
ActiveState Perl and the modules you install via the command line are licensed under their original licenses.
Built Fast from Source
The ActiveState Platform gives you access to a distributed, parallel build system so that even complex development environments can build in record time—straight from source code, including linked C libraries—giving you all the security assurances and flexibility that comes with it.
Multi-OS Universal Package Manager
Use the same tooling across platforms and operating systems to manage all your Perl environments. Add, remove, update individual dependencies, or import a CPANfile or Meta.JSON file to get developing quickly.
Enterprise Grade Dependency Management
The ActiveState Platform offers automated dependency resolution with better control and more refined data to ensure that you get known-good sets of dependencies that work together.
Revision Control
See the entire history of changes to your environment with the ability to revert, fork, and merge changes between versions.
Common Development Environments
Keep teams synchronized with a centrally managed and updated Perl development environment all team members can share, eliminating “works on my machine issues”.
Ready to give it a try?
From writing your own Perl scripts, managing cloud-based services to developing apps with speech recognition features, ActiveState Perl can be used for various programming and scripting solutions. Start right away by downloading and installing ActiveState Perl 5.32 via your command line.
See how it works – CLI | See how it works – GUI | Need help? Head here – ActiveState Community Forums | Enterprise Support – Contact Sales
Trusted by Developers, Proven for the Enterprise
Frequently Asked Questions
Both ActivePerl and ActiveState Perl are 100% compatible with the open source packages you use today, but:
- ActivePerl is a pre-built Perl distribution that contains a version of Perl along with hundreds of popular packages. ActivePerl is best suited for those that just want to run a program using Perl, rather than use Perl for software development purposes.
- ActiveState Perl contains a version of Perl and a minimum of packages suitable for managing your environment. Once installed, you can then add just the packages your project requires. ActiveState Perl is best suited for those that want to develop programs using Perl.
Many organizations have policies that restrict the use of specific open source licenses or deployment of unsupported software components. ActiveState Perl provides organizations with commercial support, including maintenance for older releases of Perl, and other options to address legal and security risks.
If you do not have such requirements, you can still download ActivePerl with precompiled Perl modules, or install ActiveState Perl so you can create your own Perl environment with just the modules you need.
ActiveState Perl is more suitable for enterprise needs. While Strawberry Perl is a popular and excellent community-driven open source Perl distribution, it cannot provide support and maintenance agreements,, indemnification, vulnerability notifications and remediation , or many of the other capabilities essential to enterprise use of Perl.
ActiveState commercial support includes access to and support for 32-bit and older Perl versions, custom Perl builds, guaranteed SLA’s, and security and license reporting. See Plans & Pricing for more information.
Individual users can get started with ActiveState Perl for free. For use by organizations or teams of individuals, explore our paid plans.
ActiveState Perl is licensed via the ActiveState Platform, which offers three tiers of usage: Free, Team and Enterprise. Each tier provides access to more functionality/features and support options, as well as providing you with more “active runtimes.” An active runtime is the number of instances of software from the ActiveState Platform that are run in a 24 hour period.
ActiveState Perl licensing at the Enterprise level includes custom Perl distributions built and maintained according to your needs, as well as extended support for older Perl versions, SLA’s, and security and license reporting. See our Plans & Pricing for more information.