I keep seeing bad advice about most active dating sites in my area, so here is the version that held up.
My experience with active dating shifted completely once I paid attention to coverage in your area.
If the catchment isn't sorted, active dating will not go anywhere. Two people can have opposite results with active dating purely because of how much of it's real.
What decided it for me with active dating was how real the profiles are.
In practice, active dating lives or dies on how thin it gets outside cities. That is what worked for me on most active dating sites in my area; others here disagree.
Currently Luvdate is what I would suggest to anyone weighing up active dating.