I use 1H crossbows on my knights and other 1H melee units in their offhand. Access to good ranged finishers, especially AOE, are good for little investment.
Bows have been the better for me personally. Nothing like having a choice between sleep, stop or charm to effectively take a enemy out of the picture for a bit. Though thats mostly on my magic Archer gremlins "wand plus 1h bow familiar" which can use finishers or spells every turn practically with meditate and charge 100.
I don't mind either. But I find it pretty easy to miss with a bow when shooting from the low ground to high ground and out of it's actual range. The other way round is quite good. Well it said I actual stop until bow or crossbow as I mainly use them on my archers and I had stop using them since start of Chapter 4.