My Heritage.com is an online interactive private family tree database/website available for free for basic use (250 people – 250 MB storage) or for a small monthly fee ($4.38 monthly – 2,500 people – 500 MB storage) you can get premium add free access. Of course, for almost $10 a month you can have the Premium Plus Package with unlimited access. So this morning I thought I would test this site out and these are my personal thoughts.
I love the look and feel of the site and the ability to create and print family charts *although* you need to create, download and access the chart from the email you used to create the site. I also find there a bit to many steps involved to entering data into the base – assuming you are not importing an existing GED com. I have not yet figured out how to enter half siblings or their parents and I have been at it for almost an hour.
I was excited when I was prompted that a match was found in my tree and headed over to look at the other tree only to find that it didn’t provide me with any more information than I already had entered into my own tree. I was however given the option to contact the other submitter and I am looking forward to his reply. I then had to go through several steps to get back to my own tree which I found most inconvenient. Also, searching for other trees with your surname is not easy as the trees are all named the same but identified only with ID numbers and the submitters name not visible from the main screen. At this point I’m not sure using the site is right for my needs but I would suggest you try it yourself and see what you think.
Rating:
- Appearance: Excellent
- Ease of Navigation: Poor
- Quality of Information Found: *Only as accurate as submitted with no ability to include sources.
*At the time of this post I have not found any way to include sources but I would be happy to hear from anyone who has found otherwise.
I tried several of those types of websites around a year ago, and found them to personally be a waste of time. The majority of them had a 20MB limit on the size of a gedcom that you could upload.. on that sites that DID allow uploading of gedcom’s. My gedcom database is larger than 20MB. I initially tried entering my immediate family and cousins, but found the whole process way too time consuming. I stopped myself and asked, “What am I even doing this for?” and haven’t been back since. If family members of mine want to view my information, all they have to do is ask.. and then they could contribute what they want or know by simply telling me. Very old school, but very effective… and I’m not entering my ENTIRE family’s data twice. 🙂
I have a family tree on My Heritage, and evidently you all have changed things around.
I just found out today, that my great-grandmother’s first name was not Mary, but
was Margaret. I used to be able to go in and change he profiles of my tree, or
add dates, etc. Now I don’t seem to be able to do this. Why?
Margo who are you addressing? We are NOT affiliated with MyHeritage.com..