My host does not give me access to use cron unless I upgrade to a virtual server (considerable price hike). Is there any way around this?

Not really. Of course, you could always set up something that is going to mail you every day, but that will be less reliable or draw more resources that a cron solution. Or likely to be both. It certainly will piss off your host.

You could use pull instead of push technology though. Just make a CGI program that emails you when you request it.

But it looks like you are searching for a technical solution to a non-technical problem. Your technical problem (how do I email on a daily basis) has been solved decades ago, and is called cron. Your problem is "I don't want to pay for the service". Which isn't a technical one.

There's no such thing as a free lunch. And none of this has anything at all to do with Perl.

Abigail