On Windows, I'm using Schedule::Cron¹ to keep a long-running cron daemon. If you want to avoid long-running tasks (or can't launch them as you don't have shell access), maybe a crond loop that gets triggered every minute by a HTTP request from the outside could help.

¹Actually, I'm using Schedule::Cron::Nofork, but nowadays, Schedule::Cron has the nofork option itself and I should retire/deprecate Schedule::Cron::Nofork.