Opinions. Ancestry Vs Find My Past, FamilySearch, MyHeritage etc.

[Gadget]

Biggles ~

The OP was asking which was the best for records not DNA. It may be that Rds might want to use DNA in the future but nothing is mentioned in the original question.

Gadget

Which is "the best"?

Which would you recommend?

Do they hold all the same records? or do they different from Country and county?

Does anyone hold more Church records than the other?

Which one would you say is better for Military records? or stick with Fold3 or Forces War Records?

My main country of research is England so far, have a few hits in the States as a great-aunt marries an American G.I. after WW2 but I cannot see them without paying even more!

I have been with Ancestry while now, and just wondered if I am missing out on anything, or if I should do alternative months with each... just don't want Ancestry to delete anything on my "off" months.

I know Find My Past now has the 1921 Census, but it is ridiculous priced (for my budget at least), so have brought the single pages I wanted/needed.

Are any of them more geared up for UK Records ?

Add -as Phil says :

If you read the OP's original question, he was more concerned with record coverage (UK in particular) than tree hosting or DNA. The latter two didn't figure in his question at all.

[phil57]

Keeping a tree online gives belt and braces and should the Software become out of date and/or the company cease business then we will have an alternate.

I find it is always best to have a prime project and at least two Backup projects.

I won't repeat what I've already said, Gadget has kindly done it for me.

But I also agree with what you said above. In the event of your first point, I would import the Gedcom into another program. But I find it difficult to envisage a software genealogy program becoming out of date. If it works now, it should continue to do so. I use financial software on my PC that I last purchased in 2016. I was using the 2004 version prior to that for 12 years. Buying a new version every year is a pointless and needless expense if what I am using does what I need.

My Tree projects and associated documents, images and files, along with much else, reside on my PC and laptop. They are backed up daily to a different disc on my PC, to network attached storage and an off-site backup.

[coombs]

FindMyPast has better newspaper collections, well for me personally than Ancestry.

[Biggles50]

I may be digressing from the Op’s thread but I have software that will not now run on my computers, and my old PC will not run some new software nor will it update to Windows 11.

My Wife’s iMac is ten years old and is not supported regards component failure.  Software on it that is not updated will not function.

Being reliant on ones tree just being on a computer is a risk, short term risks may well not be a problem but how will all the data and software on a computer fair in twenty or thirty years time when the next generation will inherit your family archives?  For some of us that transfer may well take place way earlier.

Thirty years ago Windows was very much in its infancy, in 1990 when I worked in London we used MSDOS and Ashton Tate’s Framework as our software for word processing and spreadsheets.  Other software we used at the time became obsolete very quickly.

Do plan for the long term.

[Deirdre784]

I’m a big fan of - and subscribe to - both. Prefer the search facility on FindMyPast but much prefer ancestry trees. Parish records vary but if not on one they may well be on the other, and newspapers are great on FindMyPast. Military records to me are not very good on either, and have never found anything on Forces War Records (no dates or location of birth etc to narrow it down). I do use the GRO, freeBMD and freeREG too, as great cross references, but rarely bother with Family Search. Also use Family Historian software for my trees (start in ancestry and import gedcom into FH). A fantastic hobby. 

[phil57]

My last word on this topic, as you say Biggles, it has rather strayed from the original thread.

There is very little (Windows)software that can't be made to run on current computers, some with the right version of Windows, e.g. Pro. You can run programs in compatibility mode (right click on the executable, go to Properties/Compatibility) etc., you can, as I do, run programs in virtual machines hosting different operating systems. There are emulators available, etc.

My PC is the equivalent of Triggers broom. I have not bought a new PC since the early 1990s, when I replace my Amiga with a Windows PC. Periodically, it has received upgrades to its motherboard, RAM, processor, discs, case, keyboard and mouse, monitor, and it is now effectively no longer the same computer at all, but I have installed new components in stages rather than junking it and buying a brand new machine. It currently runs Win 10 on the primary partition, and Win 8.1 on a second partition. I have no wish to "upgrade" (which is not neccessarily an upgrade in the true sense of the word, at least at present) to Windows 11, but should I wish to do so in the future, I only need to add a TPM module to my existing motherboard to meet the installation requirements. It is also possible to install it on machines that don't meet the full requirements, as long as you are happy to support it yourself.

My intention, as set out in my Will, is for my research to be donated to the Society of Genealogists.

See https://www.sog.org.uk/support-us

Several family members already have printed and digital copies of my research. It is possible to produce books and complete websites from the genealogy software I use with relative ease. I have already produce booklets on a few of my lines, with copies in the hands of a few interested relatives. I intend to do so for others when my research reaches a point that I consider it sufficiently worthwhile.

But that aside, whilst I do have "recent" copies of my tree on various genealogical websites, by placing all your data on a single website, you are assuming that also will never be lost, damaged, corrupted etc. It may seem unlikely now, but Ancestry in its current form for example, didn't exist 30 years ago. Can you be sure it will still be around in 30, 50, 100 years?

But I find online trees impossibly clunky to navigate and use effectively. When a name crops up in your research, how easy is it for you to search your entire tree to see if it has cropped up in connection with any other family members or events; as a witness at a wedding, neighbour in a census, mentioned in a newspaper report alongside a relative, etc? It may be possible, I don't know as I don't wish to use an online tree to conduct my research, but such a query takes a matter of seconds using my software.

How do you record your DNA matches in an online tree? Yes, I know they are shown with an icon within the tree itself, but how do you easily compare match lengths, MRCAs, the companies they have tested with, their relationships to you etc, all in a list that can be manipulated for searching or retrieving information, or exporting to a spreadsheet for analysis? My guess is that you would have to do it outside of the tree. I can run another set of queries in seconds and find any of that information that I need.

If I want to know who might be missing from a particular census, you guessed it, I run a query.

If I want to see where all my relatives lived, or a timeline of where a single relative lived, or a family group, I can show that on a world map.

If I want to find out which relatives had a particular occupation, it takes seconds, etc. etc.

So I'm sorry, but an online tree is not for me ever going to be a suitable primary repository of my ongoing research. If it suits you, that is fine. It's not my intention to criticise, just to explain my position.

With my tree constantly updated onto several different media and offsite backups, I think I am at least as well and possibly better covered against disaster that a single on;line tree. Again, you might disagree. That's fine, and if you are happy with your arrangement, who am I to criticise. I am just explaining my methods, and my reasoning.