My Heritage or Ancestry subscription?

OU812 · 05-11-2015 12:01pm #1

Was considering asking for a subscription to one of these sites for Xmas & wondering about people's opinions on both.

I did a subscription to Ancestry for a month earlier this year & it was great, although I should have gone for the world rather than just UK as within 3 generations I discovered family who had gone beyond the UK.

I'm getting a lot of Smart matches on My Heritage lately & the people matching have subscriptions & seem to be accurate in terms of who they've matched up & I've even discovered branches of the family I wasn't aware of through that.

Thoughts ?

pinkypinky · 05-11-2015 12:21pm

Depends on what you want it for.

Ancestry's hint system is the best around but I don't know if they have a wider database than My Heritage.

In terms of Irish records, Findmypast is the best at the moment.

Thomas from Presence · 09-11-2015 11:54am

Both Ancestry and MyHeritage are both guilty of having users who happily collect ancestors using smart matching. The problem is that in many cases they are unreferenced so, there may be one source tree with a guess and thousands of other trees referencing each other perpetuating the guess as fact.

One project I'm working on at the moment is untangling the early side of my paternal clan by creating referenced source genealogies because many are simply wrong.

This is an issue not exclusive to genealogy. One of my gang appears in biographies as being Irish by virtue of his holding an Irish title. Centuries later and this is accepted fact when in reality his English baptism is actually readily consultable on Ancestry.

Anyway - ranting aside, if your family are like mine they'll pop up all over the planet. Ancestry has an amazing collection of scanned original documents that make your research scholarly. MyHeritage is a lot like FamilySearch with waffly weirdos tripping over each other to aggrandise themselves with incorrect lineages.

A combination of Ancestry, FindMyPast and, grudgingly, RootsIreland opens many doors on the paid end of things.

KildareFan · 09-11-2015 1:08pm

I use Ancestry and Findmypast and now and again i reluctantly pay up for Roots if absolutely necessary .

At least the €25 a month deal is far superior to the earlier gouge your eyes out per view. I was very disappointed to see that the free registers on NLI only go up to the 1880s in most cases, whereas Roots sometimes goes in to the 1900s.

I have several family trees on Ancestry and have managed to break down brick walls through linking in with other trees - some trees are private but the hints system can identify common ancestors and you just ask 'nicely' the owner of the private tree to share. I note down any information from other trees, but I wait until I have independent evidence before I add to my own tree. I have found many errors in other trees based on people happily copying other trees without checking sources.

Findmypast is useful mainly for the newspapers and the petty sessions & prison registers, Dublin workhouse records, directories...

VirginiaB · 09-11-2015 5:18pm

I have had a world subscription to Ancestry for about seven years and it has paid for itself many times over. Not without fault but they are constantly adding records and I don't think any site can compare to them in number of records, ease of use etc.

You can also Google 'Ancestry coupons' and find discounts for membership.

A lot of the best Irish records--Griffith's Valuation, the Tithe Applotments, 1901 and 1911 censuses, Catholic parish records--are free. Unless you count what I spent traveling to Ireland now that I know many of the places my ancestors came from--worth everything to me.

I have not used My Heritage but John Grenham wrote a fairly scathing blog post about his experience with them several months ago. Sorry I can't remember the exact date.

My Ancestry tree is private as so many copy carelessly but, as someone else just noted, anyone seeking a particular person can message me and I always reply. And I have contacted others as well. Have found Irish-origin cousins all over the world that way.

tabbey · 10-11-2015 12:36am

I have MyHeritage for a couple of years, I was tempted by their smart matches. It is noticeable that these matches become more numerous when the subscription is coming up for renewal.

Family trees on all these sites must be treated with great scepticism. Some subscribers are into quantity rather than accuracy, it is best not to follow them. A lady came into the GSI, we looked up her ancestor who was in the 1861 E&W census. The ancestor was quite clearly enumerated as a lodger, but three family trees on Ancestry had him as the son of the Head of Household. One careless genealogist had made the error, and two others had blithely copied it. If your family history is worth researching, it is worth doing properly. Those who are happy with fiction or fantasy, should read a novel.

Jellybaby1 · 11-11-2015 11:45pm

Its Ancestry for me. I have followed up their hints and found so many live relatives all over the world who were thrilled when I contacted them. I will have to give up my subscription pretty soon as I've hit so many brick walls at this stage I may try a monthly FMP just for a trial though in the hope it might create a few cracks in said walls.

elverstown · 16-11-2015 8:33am

Last Christmas I got a sub for My Heritage,mixed feelings, I had previously used a free Geni. Smart matches are doing my head in, most of what I am getting back is what I had already put in, or what other people had "harvested"
from Geni and again coming back to me as smart matches, not smart.

My Heritage or Ancestry subscription?

Comments