> "keep a cron job running" sounds like it you're running the cron job by hand.

Cron jobs fail sometimes. You have to monitor them, investigate why they failed, fix the issue, and rerun them.

Web servers fail, too, but with shared hosting, it's mostly not your problem. And shared hosting providers are still trying to charge an arm and a leg to manage SSL certs for you (because it's a nice high-margin business for them).