Which paid Genealogy sites are best?

Question

Hi, experienced amateur genealogists!

I've been in Ancestry.ca for so long that when I first joined it was free! Currently, I am paying them nearly $400CDN a year. I've found lots of primary source material there, and connected with some distant relatives - I've been happy with it. Lately, though, I was just wondering if that money would be better spent elsewhere.

My question - what, in your opinion, is/are the best paid websites for amateur research, specifically for Acadian and UK/West European genealogy? (Only primary sources - using an unsourced tree is a mistake I won't do again, LOL!)

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Answer 1

It really depends on what you want to do.
I haven't tried a paid version of Findmypast, but have MyHeritage and Ancestry.

 For general tree purposes, especially with a big tree Ancestry has by far the best software, you can pull info including sources directly from other peoples trees, always useful if you find a well researched tree. MyHeritage at one stage announced this feature as coming soon, it didn't.
 Ancestry also allows you to merge profiles, something sadly lacking on MyHeritage.
 Neither site warns you if you are creating a duplicate profile.
 For DNA features MyHeritage is streets ahead, it has a Chromosome browser and reports the cM shared between two shared matches (if you share DNA with A and B, it tells you how many cM A and B share). Ancestry have apparently announced this feature but I've yet to see it (and it costs extra). Ancestry and MyHeritage have systems that try to show how you and your match descend from a common ancestor using info from trees in their database, Ancestry's version actually works most of the time but is only as accurate as the trees on their site, MyHeritage occasionally gets it right.
 My experience with customer service is that it's seriously lacking on both sites, both seem to have the view that anything not working properly is the customer's fault.

 Yes it's a lot of money, but a lot cheaper than pay tv where I come from.

Comments

I also had  Ancestry paid subscriptions, I think I used it one year, I have a paid subscription to My Heritage, I dabble in my Heritage, Wikitree...All depends of what you are looking for....

Answer 2

It also depends where your ancestors are. I tend to think Ancestry has better all round coverage, but Findmypast has a lot of record sets that Ancestry doesn't have, particularly for Berkshire, Leicestershire and some parts of Yorkshire, and some different social records and different Wills (particularly Leicestershire - whereas Ancestry is a must have for Wiltshire). I prefer the search on Findmypast too.

I expect the ideal thing would be to spend a year on one and a year on the other.

Answer 3

Hello Michelle,

I have a paid subscription to the full service provided by 'Find my Past'.

I would suggest that you only pay for the full service if you intend to use access to the 1921 census for England and Wales.

I also keep my family tree on FmP, however the wikitree GEDCOMpare process has problems in interpreting the information in the GEDCOM file particularly in referencing sources, it either ignores them or duplicates copies of them.

I see that you mention the UK - so it would depend upon whether your relatives still have descendants living in England or Wales in the 1920's.

Answer 4

I see that you have Acadian ancestors from New Brunswick. I would recommend genealogiequebec.com because they have the Drouin collection images. Their Acadia - Families database is very helpful--it groups records from the Drouin collection into families with links to the original images. It is not complete for all Acadian parishes yet though (you can see a list of what is already transcribed and added to their database here).  It is also easier to just browse the document images on this site because you can browse the images by location & year in their Drouin Collection records tool.

While Ancestry has this same image collection as well, their index of the Acadian Drouin collection is very poor/undetailed (they are currently working on re-indexing the Quebec Drouin collection records, but I don't know if they have similar plans for the Acadian locations). 

For certain New Brunswick parishes, you can also use the free indexes at the University of Moncton website to help you find parish records: https://www.umoncton.ca/umcm-ceaac/node/37.

Edit to add: there are also free transcriptions of certain Acadian parish records available at the Canadian Heritage website, see this list here: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Partage_de_connaissances_M%26G

Answer 5

As others have said it depends on where your ancestors are.

I have a paid everything/everywhere subscription to Find my Past UK, I find their search much more accurate than Ancestry, they also have records that other sites don't.

I don't much like their trees and don't use their tree builder.

I also have had an Ancestry subscription for 10 years +, tree building is easy, you do have as you said be very careful about the multitude of unsourced/copied/incorrect trees as possible sources of information.

I have not used other pay sites. Oh except for Scotland's people which is a pay as you go site.

Other free sites I use often are Free UK Genealogy, https://www.freeukgenealogy.org.uk/

It includes Free Birth, marriage and death records from 1837.

Free British census from 1841. Probably their best records are Free Parish records for baptism, marriage and burial.

Yes there are complaints that their records are not complete for all churches in all areas of Great Britain, it is a volunteer run site and it takes time to transcribe original records, what you will find is more complete information transcribed from the original records. Such as father's occupation, family residence as opposed to just the church location for the event. And it isn't the most intuitive of sites to search, just follow the instructions.

Family Search, free, is good for finding records just be careful of the family trees.

There are many other sources that can be found with a Google search. As an example after many years of looking for records for ancestors from the village of Bunny in Nottinghamshire, I googled Bunny Village Nottinghamshire history and ended up on the village website which has many records transcribed by the local historical society

In Great Britain don't forget the many local Parish Clerks websites. Yes they are transcribed records, but usually very good.

Another option which is technically a paid site is British Genealogy, it is run by professional genealogists, yes for a fee they will research your family history.

They do have a completely free advice forum, you can ask almost any sort of questions about where to find records. They will not do unpaid family research but will look up records and offer valuable advice about where to look.

The Advice forum requires a free sign up, and do not expect a speedy response, they do have paid work to do, I have always received excellent advice and information.

https://www.british-genealogy.com/forum/

Archive.org has hundreds of Parish records for uncountable places and other local histories. Take time to figure out how the search works.

In general I like Ancestry for building trees, but I love WT for accuracy and member support.

Comments

I like Ancestry the best for building a tree. Most of my sources come from there, however when the hints run out, I turn to FindMyPast because I like the search engine. Failing the latter two sites, I turn to FamilySearch. It has a good search engine too and does find some records that the others don't have. When really stuck I try many of the other free sites. A majority of my tree is focused in the UK.