Posted by FamilyHistoryFour on Wednesday, December 05, 2018 in Getting Started
Family history websites can be a huge help with research, providing you with information about your ancestors in the comfort of your own home. But how do you decide which one’s right for youFirstly, why would you need to spend money at all, there are certainly many great free of charge family history sites, but once you’ve explored these; there’ll come a point when you need to pay to get further with your search.
Subscription/pay-as-you-go family history websites, including the “big four” – Ancestry, Findmypast, MyHeritage and TheGenealogist – offer huge amounts of information about our ancestors.
When deciding which website to sign up to, whether on a pay as you go or subscription basis, it’s important to bear in mind that no one site is going to hold all the information you need. Each of the big four websites has its own unique set of records, this is why it can be useful to try before you buy, taking advantage of the trial period offered by Ancestry, Findmypast, MyHeritage and TheGenealogist. Most of us, if not all have a subscription or two to a family history website from the big four.
All of the big four subscription websites offer an easy to use family tree builder that enables you to add people quickly. To help you further the software automatically will sift through millions of records to identify potential matches to the people on your tree. You'll be presented with hints - historical records for ancestors already on your family tree. The hints will make it easy to add ancestors to your tree but take care it will also make it easy for you to add the wrong person to your tree.
Don’t pay for anything until you’re absolutely sure which package works for you. The most popular within the group are are Ancestry or FindMypast.
