It seems that many RM users have an Ancestry subscription but mostly use it for research. Is this common?
Once I started with RootsMagic and downloaded my tree, I stopped my subscription to Ancestry. I don’t regret it in the least.
I should think it is very common. Why do you ask?
I subscribed to My Heritage but don’t find it very helpful. Trying to evaluate the value in Ancestry.
My main tree is on Ancestry because of the DNA tie-ins. I mostly wanted RootsMagic to back up my Ancestry tree, because having a gedcom of it is NOT a true backup. I also have FamilyTreeMaker on my husband’s Windows machine and have used it for a couple of reports. Unfortunately, it seems completely unable to do a full backup of my Anc. tree, and while it is true that my tree is huge, that’s why I paid the money! I hope to learn more about how to get RM to make charts, etc but it does not run that well on my Linux machine. I can usually get it to do one thing before it freezes and it won’t quit as it should. Oh well!
The different sites vary in their coverage. There is quite a bit of good stuff on FamilySearch which is free. I have a huge bunch of Irish Quakers in my family tree and all the Irish Quaker records are exclusively on FindmyPast. I also have lots of British in India which are also exclusively there. FMP also has the best UK and Irish newspaper collection and the 1921 England and Wales census - although only for the most expensive subscriptions. Most other Irish records are available free on various web sites from Irish institutions or just on the internet. I also use Ancestry, because it is better than FMP for most UK and US records. It also has the best tools for building and sharing trees and the best DNA database. Another branch of my family is from Holland; most of the records there are also free, but I find loads of hints (via Rootsmagic) from family trees on MyHeritage. MH also seems to have good coverage of South African records. It depends where your main interests lie.
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@Roots2813 I have to agree with Alan-- it depends on what you are looking for and where your ancestors were—a long time ago, I had a free 30 day membership to Ancestry-- with a lot of hard searching, I was able to find everything I needed in 30 days–recently I signed back up to Ancestry–partly because of the DNA as you have to have a subscription to really get anywhere with the DNA results-- I also used Ancestry’s family files and the associated suggestions from a search for a new line BUT you have to be very careful as there is a lot of family files that are totally wrong and even additional suggestions can be wrong…
Ironically I noticed on Ancestry that a lot of their info for my English ancestor came from FindmyPast (no images on Ancestry) so tried FindmyPast and was AMAZED by the info and images I found on there…
As for FamilySearch, it has been my go to place for over 20 years along with a subscription to Fold3.com, Newspapers.com and the USGenweb.com pages-- If you are willing to Browse the record collection at FamilySearch, there are tons of records on there that Ancestry doesn’t have or only gives you a index version of the event…
Ancestry is expensive but a great way to get hints to records to download. The safest approach is to have a master database file on your computer and enter data into that. Any ancestry tree can then be updated by synching. This avoids having all your work stored only in a website with a history of dumping its customers (FTM 2015).
I subscribe to Ancestry for six months and then cancel. Then I’ll come back after a year or so. They do have records that are not on FamilySearch, so it’s worthwhile for me to subscribe from time to time. They do have great sales on subscriptions, like the recent one around the July 4 holiday.
I use RM9 for my main or central set of tree databases. I subscribe to Ancestry, MyHeritage, and FindMyPast. I also maintain related trees on Family Search and WikiTree. In my case, RM9 is a kind of “central” point of comparison with all the other trees I use. No other tool can do this - least of all any of the subscription services. Ancestry, MyHeritage, and FindMyPast, for example, utterly refuse to share anything between them. The principal reason for using those services is that they have trees for relatives that I can see and share. ANC has trees for my American relatives, MH has trees for my Scandinavian relatives, and FMP has trees for my English relatives. FS might seem like a nice choice for a central tree - but it does not support DNA matching. Finally, there is WT - which is very useful because it is the only open database in the whole bunch that anyone can search and see. WT can also share DNA matching data. Any time I need to share some kind of tree information on a distant relative, WT is most often the place to reference for sharing.
I most certainly do not agree on having Roots Magic as my sole repository for years of Family Research.
Ancestry is my Prime location, Roots Magic is a Backup, as is Reunion and Family Historian. The latter two are hardly used but Reunion does a far better job at charting than RM or FH.
Not content with this all my Media, citations etc are also recorded in a Folder system so if RM becomes defunct in 40 years time my research will still be available.
Certainly files I created 30 years ago in Word and Publisher can still be read today. Videos created in the 90’s still play on my PC, images are still viewable.
Whilst RM is great, multiple backups on multiple storage media is the way to go.
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