Geni Vs MyHeritage

3 Comments

I am currently trying to narrow down which online service I will spend most of my time and effort in these days, and I believe that I have it narrowed down to Geni or MyHeritage, both have thier advantages, and disadvantages.

MyHeritage is great because of the offline browser which you can use to backup your family to an online tree, but its limited in the free to 1000 names which I am rapidly coming close to at 961 names. I think you can have unlimited pictures in MyHeritage, and one of the better features is their SmartMatching technology, which was explained in an earlier post. (It will try and match names in your tree with names in every tree that MyHeritage has, provide a percentage, and show you the tree). MyHeritage is also easy to navigate, but you can only have so many members in your free account.

Geni is free, I have not seen any referance to the limit in the size of the tree, or how many members you can invite. But there is no offline browser, if you make updates, it will have to be by hand to the Geni website, after you have updated on your preferred software. Uploading new tree's at this time is next to impossible as you have to create a new account, and try and merge. (Not likely to happen, have tried it and didn't like it). There is also no SmartMatching on Geni, you can extend your tree by having someone login with an email address associated with their tree that matches one in your tree.

I think that right now I will stay with both till I reach the MyHeritage limit, then I maybe forced to move. I also have an ItourTree account, but have not had the chance to explore it as much, and don't want to keep inviting everyone over and over as I try and decide which is the best website.

About Post Author

Xfaith

David has been an avid home genealogist for 15 years, researching surnames: DECKER, KONDRC, MACZEK, HOPFENGARTNER, PERUTZ, LEDERER, and more.

3 comments:

AnonymousOctober 8, 2008 at 10:24 AM
David,

Sounds like you are putting a lot of thought into this decision, as you should. I wanted to help you clarify a few points:

You are correct, Geni accounts are free and without limit. There are no limits to the number of people, photos, videos, invites, etc. In fact, our largest connected group of people is over 1.2 million profiles!

Which brings up merging: when you add an email address and invite someone that is already on another Geni tree, that person can choose to merge their profiles which will merge the trees together. Unlike some other sites, the trees actually merge, creating one common, more accurate record of your family history.

Give Geni a try and let us know what you think!

-Noah
The Geni Team
AnonymousOctober 10, 2008 at 2:00 AM
Hi David,

good that you like MyHeritage. You have mentioned the completely free "Family Tree Builder" software and the very sophisticated smart matching technology that is particularly useful, as MyHeritage has more than 260 million profiles which makes the probability of finding relatives much higher than with the other websites.

And have you seen the new photo features? Our redesigned photo albums now use face recognition to help you organise your photo collection. In minutes you can tag your family and friends in all photos so you can access them by who is on the photo. All fully integrated with your family tree.

Best
Mario

P.S.: Email me at mario @ myheritage.com if you have any further questions.
AnonymousDecember 12, 2008 at 11:59 AM
Glad to see neither post, from either company helped to clarify this in any way, shape, or form.