The delay isn't going to be in CGI::Simple. It's either in the templating or the database calls. Separate your database calls from the rest of the code and compare run time with overall time. If the database calls are only a small fraction of overall time, you need to speed up your templating system, most likely by hard coding your highest traffic pages rather than templating. If your database calls use up most of the overall time, look into indexes and optimizing your database fairly often.