Cronjobs

If you need recurring tasks, e.g. back upping your database every week or checking if a subscription has ended, and your (shared) hosting runs on a Windows server you probably don't have an option to run cron jobs. Unlike Linux servers, which do support this.

There are several sites that offer free cron services for you. The best is the German site cronjob.de. (Use Babelfish to translate the site.) It supports unlimited cron jobs down to every 5 minutes, unlike other sites like webcron.org which offers only 3 cron jobs down to every one hour.