Croc pots have their place, but I'd also encourage people not to underestimate the simple cast iron dutch oven in your well... oven. It's more versatile than a croc pot while being nearly as hands off.
I haven't used a slow cooker for years once I got a dutch oven. First a Lodge, then a used Le Creuset 5.5 quart for less than a quarter of the price new. It looked like it got used on campfires, but it cleaned up nice. I have no reason to believe the LC won't last the rest of my life, but if it didn't, I wouldn't hesitate to pay full price to replace it, for the versatility and sheer joy it brings me. (I can't compare it to the other big names, but compared to a Lodge the straight sides/larger cooking surface are a "no going back after having" improvement.) It may be my favourite physical thing in my possession.
For many dishes, dutch ovens work pretty well on the stove top. You gain more & faster heat control, lose some evenness of heating (important for some dishes, meaningless for others), and may need to fiddle a bit more with the heat controls to get a really slow simmer. And it easily does things like browning onions or searing meat, where a crock pot is useless.
I think there's a fair number of people ok with leaving the house when a croc pot is going vs a gas stove. Otherwise they're the same, but with the oven+dutch combo giving you better temp control as well as a wider range of temps. Like when I make carnitas I do it at 325F so that it fries off in its own rendered fat. The croc pot version is tasty but can't duplicate that.
