At this time of year, I often find myself in discussion about the relative merits and flaws for different genealogy websites. By chance today, I came across some negative reviews on Trust Pilot for one such site, and it struck me, reading the largely poor reviews, that most people were misunderstanding the whole point.
Ireland is fortunate to have a lot of free genealogy sites, with comprehensive details. A lot of older genealogy enthusiasts will say that you don’t need to spend any money to research your family tree. I think you can get to a certain point easily for free but eventually you will spend money in some form.
If you are considering a subscription to a commercial genealogy site, there are several factors to consider before you put your hand in your pocket.
- Cost per month/year – is it cheaper to buy a year’s subscription, despite the initial larger outlay?
- How much research will I be doing over the next X months? There’s no point taking out a month’s subscription and then going on holidays for half of it.
- What content does the site have for Ireland (or wherever you’re researching)?
- Is this content duplicated elsewhere for free? Very often the answer is yes, on FamilySearch. But different algorithms produce different results from the same datasets. See my example below.
- What periods do these records cover?
- Where were my ancestors in the timeframe covered?
- Are there gaps in these records by time/place?
- Do records even exist for what I’m looking for? Some of the negative reviewers were clearly ignorant of the rules regarding online privacy & limitations caused by it. Irishgenealogy.ie doesn’t have any births after 1925. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist!
- What am I going to do with the information I find? For example, sites may prohibt reusage for certain reasons.
I published a study of Ure families in Ireland in 2020 in The Irish Genealogist. In it, I produced the following table to show the differences between the civil registration records for that surname. The results are similar but not identical. Apart from Irish Genealogy, the other 3 are identical datasets – FMP and Ancestry licensed the indexes from FamilySearch. Searching & cross-referencing added to my study.
| Births | Deaths | Marriages | |
| Irish Genealogy | 32 | 31 | 21 |
| Findmypast | 32 | 25 | 25 |
| Familysearch | 33 | 28 | 26 |
| Ancestry | 33 | 25 | 26 |
The short summary here is: do your homework before you buy. Remember, with most sites, you can cycle the memberships a month at a time to give you a taster before you purchase a longer terms subscription. To get the most value from them, you will likely need to research everywhere. One of the biggest errors I see when I review other people’s trees is an over-reliance on one particular platform.