Absolutely! And Trove is great, as long as you are not looking for recent stuff, and they have the newspapers you want for the time period you need.
And once you get back to the UK or Europe, it’s a whole new ballgame, as you know! The newspapers available as an extra in FMP are great, as it’s cheaper to add to the basic FMP sub to be able to access Irish Newspapers or the British Newspapers than it is to subscribe to them individually.
As with all this stuff, what your particular requirements are dictate which services are ‘the best’ for you, and indicate which are worth subscribing to, and for how long.
Keeping your full tree on your own computer, with ALL the stuff you have garnered over the years from hundreds of different places is the only sensible way to do this properly, and it doesn’t matter whether you use a free or paid programme on your own computer, as long as it meets your particular requirements.
Wonderful information in this thread, I will be going through them and seeing what I can give a go.
A couple of things to add. Before I posted to this forum I did use the ‘chat bot’ to try and get some information and as my question wasn’t really generic I was transferred to a ‘real’ person and told someone would be in touch via the phone.
I got a phone call not long after and was given a sales pitch when once I said that I was wanting to compare prices as I may switch to MyAncestry and that I needed a price list for MyHeritage. Waffle…. Waffle….this is what you are getting….waffle, I kept interrupting and asking him what each package actually entailed.
I think he quickly realised that I wasn’t playing ball so I was put on hold whilst he ‘spoke to his supervisor’ and he came back with a special price for 5 years membership, rattling off the numbers which I quickly worked out how much a year it would be. Maybe tempting but when I said I suppose it’s a one off offer that I need to accept now he once again spoke to his supervisor (I know it wasn’t happening!) and he came back with another offer which meant I would be getting full access for 5 years for the price of not full access for 2 years. I did take the deal for a number of reasons. So all I can say, if you want to get a better price, just mention the competition then you will be in line for a deal.
Most of the freebies mentioned in this thread I have used but only briefly. I will go back and see what I can use. It’s the old conundrum of having ‘too many’ resources and deciding on parameters.
My tree has many records in India which I am delighted to see are very detailed and seem to offer a lot of information.
I also have records in Germany and Poland and I have to restrict where the branches are going…too many!
Fourteen months ago I was dismayed to see a largish amount for the My Heritage renewal had been automatically deducted from my account - It was $115.17. I did nothing, accepted it. But then not acting further led me to noticing a payment two months ago for $383.90 had been deducted to My Heritage. I emailed, I rang. I jumped up and down. They said too late. I told them I knew my rights, there was a cooling off period - and that I needed that money to pay bills. I also then threatened to scream to the press, and demanded a refund and that they cancel my subscription. It was regretful. I had a lot of fun with it. Now I regularly get tempting emails I can’t access unless I pay. I also get emails offering me a 50% off for six months subscription. It’s a racket - albeit interesting. $115 to $383? Nice work if they can get away with it.
Let me see if I understand this; you authorised an automatically renewing service, at some point noticed it was there, failed to cancel it despite not wanting it and then you complain that it is a racket?
Life gets in the way and I was away. I weighed up the $115.17 - decided I could justify it. And during last year I researched a lot. But then it jumped from that to $383.90 - Perhaps it’s not obvious to you, but there is a big infuriating difference. I saw it as the way insurance companies operate - They give new customers discounts and load it on to unsuspecting long term customers.
This looks like you changed plans, is that right? So how did you not know the price would rise?
I changed absolutely nothing.
I got a full refund. But then this offer came yesterday - It’s for half (for a period) of a slightly less price than $383.
I think they are being very naughty. They quote the price excluding GST. Once that is added, then the price goes by 10%.
As far as I know, that is not allowed in Australia.
Common to many subscription type services. Unfortunately the legal standard or business as usual standard practice does not always align with the community standard many of us would consider reasonable. There is no practical consumer reason why a provider cannot deliver a service where the user must explicitly opt to continue at each renewal date. It’s simply more profitable to not provide the option.
The alternative service provided by competitor Ancestry does send a reminder in advance to say your account will auto renew as off …. Date, and the cost. One does need to read the email and check the SPAM box often. Just to be sure?
How and why did the price more than triple?
Wow, popular topic. Ive been an avid user of several of the ever so popular ancestry business’ with myHeritage, Ancestry,Familysearch (lds), wikitree and numerous support sites free and paid over the last few years.
My experience:
Ancestry: started with, incl dna test( you can delete it anytime) seems well created, broad appeal, fairly easy to use. A bit more expensive ( than main competitor myheritage) so moved over to
Myheritage: an easier perhaps friendlier access and use, able to upload external tree and dna data. Discounts offered to stay subscribed ( so does Ancestry now)
Familysearch(LDS): very accessible, free to use and search: a large record base, particarly on USA ( but personally Im not an LDS fan so use it only for research)
Wikitree is like a CoOp- free. perhaps originally the genealogists site, but has morphed into consumer use. Formal, rules, find it a bit frustrating, but a strong intention to validate their records with source records. Good on research.
There are others like findmypast, Geni, Legacy etc and many many adhoc free and other paid sites.
Ancestry/myheritage and Familysearch are the big 3. Many of their records are shared but they all fight for records market share and have their exclusives access specialties. Its an info ownership war. They DO use each others data so cross sell to each other.
The main 3 are the family tree building sites and its very very popular…
My warning: millions of family trees exist world wide and it is this that myheritage/ancestry are building their income from. Okay, but there is little auditing for accuracy of those family trees but they are still on-sold as part of your subscription. I am constantly advised about dozens of new ’ connected’ trees to join onto my tree. Big Problem. Many and I mean a lot of family tree/records have no source material - original ID record to confirm a person in a tree is true/accurate. Secondly, many same names in the same city, district or even small town exist. Eg; I have many John Clarks all born within a couple of years in the same area and records in the 1800s can be within 5yrs of accuracy ( census records) so the End result is a large volume of error, wrong people, wrong time, wrong parents, wrong locations bound up in family trees being resold as fact. In my opinion its a race for income and market share over quality and it is spiralling into a mess.
Unless you have near family knowledge, certainty and access to reliable documents I strongly suggest you DO NOT rely on other trees without careful checking. Its also a round robin event- my tree is sold on, others adopt it to theirs and then it will come back to me as new for me to adopt… get the idea.!? Crap in, crap out. Ive made mistakes, deleted them, only to find them later on line presented as fact. Ouch! I get the social media- linking family thing, but is it accurate?
I have removed all linked ‘others’ family trees from mine and gone back to basics of using my sourced original docs from my private access and also those on line.
Im running two trees one on ancestry (my original) and the other on myheritage and although there is something ‘easy’ abt myheritage their software mods ( on trees), their inaccuracy level and there total disinterest in stemming the bleed of rubbish resold is losing my interest quickly ( yes ive written to them). Dont worry Ancestry is as complisert (sp?)selling rubbish but I find I have more control to delete error and control my tree outcomes.
In summary they all have really good broad records databases, easy to build software for your tree but beware of what you attach/build.
Geneology is great fun and insightful. And ooooh all those blacksheep, indiscretions, adoptions, secrets, and one night stands that can be revealed ( with dna) and shine some light on it all is a great leveller of humanity and its natural foibles. If you are strict on morals and/or religion you are going to be challenged. That upstanding uncle, mother or granny were not so likely pure of thought or deed. smile:
R
It’s up to the individual how much you import from others and how much you trust them. My attitude is look at other trees very carefully and only use verifiable connections and ‘facts’. There is no chance the vendors will do it for you so whether the are complicit is irrelevant. Unless you are going to hire a genealogist at great expense you must do it yourself.
On a different tack, how long before an AI is trained up to do genealogy? Is there any chance of it being any good?
Already a thing looking at how Ancestry develops “Thru Lines” from tree data linked by DNA, offers “we think we have found …. father/mother” and regular hints - 
What’s not clear is how the algorithm decides on which links and hints to prioritise. Our experiences suggest it is a popularity contest that assumes the right answer is that most often supported by other members. Possibly not AI depending on your definition.
Proof of fallibility can be found when the LDS attributed one of my ancestors to being born to a farmer with a different surname and living in a different country despite part of the same record providing the correct and contradictory information.
In general I agree with your sentiment, but myheritage locks whole tree data together) in other trees - ‘smart matches & discovery matches’ and you cannot audit, vet or change any detail- the lot or nothing… just looking at these matches attaches them to your tree, whether you ‘save’ or not. If you chamge ypur mind or want to delete any part or all of it, you are required to unconnect each person from parents, siblings and or children one at a time before deleting. Further the added trees now go into a subsection ‘segmented’ area of your tree making them not obvious/visible. All of this is clearly a difficulty to managing your tree with a focus on volume of other trees being a focus point. While I like many aspects of myheritage, Ancestry is better designed for more considered inclusion-deletion of records.
In general this all has become a high volume McD type of push sales business unfortunately.
R
I can well relate to deleting and viewing matches. I have spent the last few weeks unlinking and deleting a number of inconsistencies, duplicates and unsupported branches. Learning the hard way I am now quite discerning with who and what I accept. I am annoyed when I don’t want to add the match even though it is one. The options, ‘accept this match’ and ‘this is not the same person’ is too restrictive. I do have to assume that official documents are more or less correct and will only add to my tree if the evidence is supported. My tree has got a bit smaller but to me it’s not about the size but rather being able to clearly see the relationships and that ‘yes, cousins married cousins’, and that sometimes a family has a child with the same names because one died before the other was born!! The never ending maze…
