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I am thinking that MyHeritage.com might be the best alternative. I had already uploaded my Ancestry.com DNA to this site a few years ago. Its main fault is that it has a much smaller customer base, especially when it comes to Americans as noted above. This however can change if more people migrate there. I am going to suggest this to my relatives in our family genealogy group.
I doubt many people will migrate to MyHeritage and abandon Ancestry - on the DNA side they are known for having very unreliable ethnicity reports (with no sign they plan to update or fix it), and on the records side their database is only about half the size of Ancestry's (yet it's not half the cost so it's a worse value). I've also heard some horror stories of how aggressive MyHeritage sales calls are if you cancel your subscription. I've never bought anything from MH so they don't have my details beyond my email so I've been spared this, but lots of people attest to being aggressively harassed by them on the phone to re-subscribe. Keep in mind they are an Israeli company and I don't know what the laws are there when it comes to business practices. Some people get concerned about a US company having your DNA, how about a company in a foreign country having your DNA?
It's frustrating that there's not really a good alternative to Ancestry so they sort of unofficially have a monopoly on internet genealogy but my research can't afford to abandon Ancestry.
I doubt many people will migrate to MyHeritage and abandon Ancestry - on the DNA side they are known for having very unreliable ethnicity reports (with no sign they plan to update or fix it), and on the records side their database is only about half the size of Ancestry's (yet it's not half the cost so it's a worse value). I've also heard some horror stories of how aggressive MyHeritage sales calls are if you cancel your subscription. I've never bought anything from MH so they don't have my details beyond my email so I've been spared this, but lots of people attest to being aggressively harassed by them on the phone to re-subscribe. Keep in mind they are an Israeli company and I don't know what the laws are there when it comes to business practices. Some people get concerned about a US company having your DNA, how about a company in a foreign country having your DNA?
It's frustrating that there's not really a good alternative to Ancestry so they sort of unofficially have a monopoly on internet genealogy but my research can't afford to abandon Ancestry.
I am thinking that MyHeritage.com might be the best alternative. I had already uploaded my Ancestry.com DNA to this site a few years ago. Its main fault is that it has a much smaller customer base, especially when it comes to Americans as noted above. This however can change if more people migrate there. I am going to suggest this to my relatives in our family genealogy group.
I don't think My Heritage will have the amount of users that Ancestry has, I could be wrong, it may take another ten years. They've been doing DNA for 8 years now.
My Heritage has DNA tools that Ancestry does not have, such as seeing what the relationship is to a shared match of a match. Click on a DNA match to view it. You will see common matches listed below. It will show that a common match is your 2nd or whatever cousin including how many cM's there are, it will also show what level cousin match to the DNA match you're viewing, along with the cM's between them. You may see that the match is a child of the common match, or it could be aunt/uncle or something else. If a person is trying to break down a brick wall, My Heritage may be the better option to solve it if there are enough quality matches.
I've tried to get My Heritage built up over the years. Just about everyone that comes here has uploaded way back before January 2018 when they stopped going advanced DNA tools for free. They have offered advanced features since then, it has usually been offered for one week around April. I had two kits that did not have full advanced DNA features so I deleted them, then reuploaded them during the free offer.
The last DNA kit I uploaded was my daughters father two years ago in 2022. Unfortunately I can't see if that kit has full advanced features because my heritage is updating ethnicity reports, which is the first time I've seen them do it. It's long over due. Hopefully the update will be more so like what people get on Ancestry and 23 and me. That would make a lot people happy. My ethnicity is right, both of my parents were immigrants from Hungary in the late 50's. The only other ethnicity I have is a small bit of Italian from my mothers fathers side.
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Originally Posted by WRM20
If Ancestry did the digitization for free, then no one can complain about needing a subscription to access the records. If someone does not want to pay for the subscription, they can travel to Pennsylvania and search the original records.
I just went back to the articles, neither says if there was a price. I could have sworn I saw more details about it in the original article I read the other day. The articles say "entered into an agreement" and that it would cost $300k a year to maintain. I'll be surprised if PA did not get paid something.
I'm not sure if PA retained the paper copies of what Ancestry made digital, it sounds like they did not keep the original documents. According to one article, it says he did a FOIA (freedom of info act) to Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) wanting all records the state agency turned over to Ancestry. He also asked for the metadata on the digitized documents, as well as any indexes Ancestry created for them. His request was denied by PHMC saying they had no responsive records in its possession.
Reclaim the records sued NY, it wanted copies of all of the records that NY has already digitized. The article says it's about 8 million documents.
Reclaim the Records is saying NY is trying to profit from the historical records they have. Reclaim the records won the lawsuit in three different courts so far. It looks like NY has been doing it's own record scanning.
An archival activist who’s long been a thorn in the side of New York bureaucrats says an attempted cash grab by the city sparked her bid to get millions of its historical records — so she can put them online, for free, “forever,” according to a lawsuit.
Brooke Schreier Ganz’s nonprofit, Reclaim the Records, has already put online more than 30 million public documents since 2015, including searchable indexes listing old births, deaths and marriages. The group targets records it says are “wrongly restricted” by local governments.
A New York native who lives in California, Ganz and Reclaim the Records have already beaten the city in court three times as it fights for records.
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Originally Posted by cdnirene
It depends. MyHeritage would be a heck of a lot more expensive for me because it forces an annual paid subscription. On Ancestry I usually only subscribe for a month, perhaps once or twice a year, to check out new Hints and do DNA work. Most of my records research is done off-site now so an annual subscription, although convenient, would mostly be a waste of money. I can access and work on my tree for free year round.
What do you mean that My Heritage would be forcing you to buy a subscription? Didn't you upload your DNA before January 2018 when they stopped giving free advanced tools?
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Originally Posted by PA2UK
I saw that a few years ago but I thought they abandoned it because I didn't see anything more about it. I think back then it was $50/year. This does make the changes a little less outrageous. They at least are offering a more affordable option just for the DNA features, so you're not forced to pay the higher fees for access to records if you don't want that. They still shouldn't have put existing features behind the paywall though.
If they made it $30 a year, it wouldn't be so bad. I don't see most people without a subscription paying $60 a year to see newly blocked features.
Some people want to do ancestry DNA on sale for $59 (free shipping buying from amazon) but they can't come up with the $60. $60 is a lot of money to some people.
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Originally Posted by PA2UK
I doubt many people will migrate to MyHeritage and abandon Ancestry - on the DNA side they are known for having very unreliable ethnicity reports (with no sign they plan to update or fix it), and on the records side their database is only about half the size of Ancestry's (yet it's not half the cost so it's a worse value). I've also heard some horror stories of how aggressive MyHeritage sales calls are if you cancel your subscription. I've never bought anything from MH so they don't have my details beyond my email so I've been spared this, but lots of people attest to being aggressively harassed by them on the phone to re-subscribe. Keep in mind they are an Israeli company and I don't know what the laws are there when it comes to business practices. Some people get concerned about a US company having your DNA, how about a company in a foreign country having your DNA?
It's frustrating that there's not really a good alternative to Ancestry so they sort of unofficially have a monopoly on internet genealogy but my research can't afford to abandon Ancestry.
I just found that as of October 2018, the total number of historical records My Heritage has was over 9 billion. The My Heritage wiki also says that In 2015, MyHeritage reached 6.3 billion historical records,[14] 200 million photographs,[41] 80 million registered users, and availability in 42 languages.[10] It also released the Global Name Translation technology, which automatically translates names from different languages to make searching for ancestors more efficient
I just went to my heritage to look at the ethnicity of the kits I manage but no ethnicity shows. It says they're doing an update, come back tomorrow. Their ethnicity update is long over-due.
I know my ethnicity is right there but I'm not mixed with a lot of different ethnicities which they have had an issue with.
My Heritage called me years ago after I had been looking at their subscriptions. I'm not sure how they got my cell number, I don't recall ever putting it in my profile there. They said that they can beat any sale price that was showing on the web site. I told them I wasn't interested in a subscription. They have never called me back.
If I did want a subscription, I wouldn't mind hearing what their sales people have to offer. It sounded like they could make it a lot cheaper then what the current sale was.
Thanks, I hadn't seen that they were bought out. My Heritage has been busy buying other companies since about 2017. They've bought
Legacy Family Tree software and Legacy webinars program
SNPedia and Promethease.
In February 2014, the company partnered with BillionGraves to digitize and document graves and cemeteries worldwide
partnered with EBSCO Information Services to provide educational institutions (libraries, universities, etc.) with free access to MyHeritage's database of historical records
In December 2014, MyHeritage entered into an agreement with the Danish National Archives to index Census records and Parish registers from 1646 to 1930
In 2013, MyHeritage entered into a strategic partnership to allow FamilySearch to use its technologies. At the time of the deal, MyHeritage had 75 million registered users and 1.6 billion people profiles.[6] The company also gained access to all United States census records from 1790 to 1940.[34] In April 2013, MyHeritage released Family Tree Builder 7.0, which included new features like sync, Unicode, and record matches.[35] MyHeritage also introduced a web feature called Record Detective that automatically makes connections between different historical records
Oh that's interesting, I hadn't heard about that. However, it looks like they are still headquartered in Israel. It doesn't matter where the owners are based, only where they operate. If MyHeritage is still headquartered in Israel, they are still operating under Israeli law, as far as I know. Not that I have a problem with Israeli law, I just don't know anything about it.
What do you mean that My Heritage would be forcing you to buy a subscription?
They said forced annual subscription, meaning you only have the option to pay annually, there's no monthly option like there is at Ancestry. No monthly option means they're forcing people to commit to a whole year, which will be more expensive in comparison to only subscribing 1-3 months out of the year.
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I just found that as of October 2018, the total number of historical records My Heritage has was over 9 billion.
They make the size of their records database pretty clear in the Collection Catalog so as of right now, it says: "7,327 collections with 19,759,918,750 records". So they have less than 20 billion records, whereas Ancestry have over 40 billion (they don't give an exact number and the card catalog only reports the number of collections, not records), roughly half the size. It's worth noting they include family trees in that number, but so do Ancestry. If you remove those from the total, MyHeritage has under 13 billion, but Ancestry still has about 35 billion. From that perspective, their records database is significantly less than half the size of Ancestry, but you don't pay even half the cost, let alone more than half the cost. Anyway you look at it, the value is worse.
Of course, the content varies - MyHeritage will have some collections that Ancestry doesn't have and if those collections are vital to someone's research, then it might be worth the cost. I haven't found that to be the case for me so personally, the value at MH would be much worse and I wouldn't ever switch to them unless that changed.
What do you mean that My Heritage would be forcing you to buy a subscription? Didn't you upload your DNA before January 2018 when they stopped giving free advanced
I created a tree on My Heritage more than 10 years ago (just with my direct ancestors as the number of people allowed in my tree was very restricted without a paid subscription). I deleted the tree a couple of years ago. My Heritage was totally useless to me if I wasn’t willing to pay for an annual subscription. I would have been willing to pay for a month now and again but that wasn’t offered.
I often use FamilySearch. They are a site that provides access to trees and genealogical info from the LDS church. It's free. If you search for yourself, or a known relative, you can then tap into the extensive trees and really exciting info and materials (photos, personal histories, documents) on their site. People in my extended family are LDS and have loaded all sorts of family history documents with info from relatives going back a couple hundred years, and they've linked our info to a tree that goes back many centuries. You don't have to be LDS to use the website.
You can also download your raw data from your DNA test on Ancestry and upload it to other sites if you find one with a price or features you like better. I sometimes just subscribe for a month or 3 months or whatever the minimum is to do what I need to do, and then cancel my membership or let it lapse.
Disappointing, yes (not personally as I have access to Ancestry for free via the DOD's library), but Ancestry has to come up with new ways to increase revenue. Even if I had to pay for this service, it's probably something I'd do for the periods where I'm actively researching. As things stand now, I'll only ever test with Ancestry due to their extensive number of family trees on the site, including those linked to a test.
I let my MH account expire for at least one year. On Apr 30th 2023 I was offered a one year "Complete Plan" subscription for $60.00. I grabbed it. I uploaded my deceased father's DNA, along with my DNA. This has proven useful. I will, again, let my subscription lapse and hope that in a year or two, I'll receive another offer that I can't refuse.
The more I think about having to pay $60 a year, the more pissed I'm getting that Ancestry is removing features that were always free for those that tested before it started.
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Originally Posted by lenora
I let my MH account expire for at least one year. On Apr 30th 2023 I was offered a one year "Complete Plan" subscription for $60.00. I grabbed it. I uploaded my deceased father's DNA, along with my DNA. This has proven useful. I will, again, let my subscription lapse and hope that in a year or two, I'll receive another offer that I can't refuse.
Was it really a one year plan or was it actually 6 months? The 6 month goes on sale for $60
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Originally Posted by aries63
It looks like you already asked this question on another forum in 2021, and the answer is that the FTDNA haplogroup is simply a subclade of the one in 23andMe, meaning a more recent branch of the same tree. Or rather, a more recent twig off the same branch. Everyone in the I-FT344905 haplogroup is also in the I-PF4135 haplogroup.
So it is not an NPE or an error. They are related through their paternal line.
The 23andMe haplogroup is about 2000 years old, and the I-FT344905 is a more recent branch off of that, which appeared about 300 years ago. The FTDNA test is good for more recent mutations which is why it's so expensive.
You may have it backwards, the 23and me test is normally $200, it goes on sale for $150. It's the FTDNA test that is cheap, but I'm not sure which test gives haplogroups. I uploaded my ancestry test there.
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