> by definition you already automated the renewal process on a schedule too
No, certbot does not run on a schedule by default. You have to set that up separately, and that can be non-trivial because you have to be able handle failures.
If you installed it with pip, it doesn't; if you installed it with an OS package or snap, it does (although it also didn't in that case for about the first year and a half of its existence, I think).
Can confirm, I have been using certbot+apache in production across multiple servers from Ubuntu apt repos since 18.04 in 2018 and scheduled auto-renewal is the default.
This is why Certbot should only be used temporarily to transition from legacy infrastructure. Ideally cert management (ACME client) needs to be baked into the server, like what Caddy does.
No, certbot does not run on a schedule by default. You have to set that up separately, and that can be non-trivial because you have to be able handle failures.