Saturday, December 26, 2015

Ancesty.com is Discontinuing Family Tree Maker!!

Citing the decline in the desktop software market Ancestry.com is making one of the stupidest decisions I have ever seen.  They are discontinuing their Family Tree Maker.  Sales will end at the end of this year and support will end in 2017. 

Why is this the worst idea I have seen:

1. I don't know a single serious genealogist that doesn't use some sort of desktop software to organize their database.  They use it to:
  • Create charts and reports
  • Show a view of a tree for relatives and other people
  • Detect anomalies in their tree.

2. FTM downloaded all of the images and media that I attached to my tree automatically.  Now I guess I have to go back and download all of my media that I have been storing inside of Family Tree Maker.

3.  It gave us a good way to use Ancestry but still maintain our data separately and a way that we could be independent from Ancestry's service if we wanted to.

I am pretty mad!


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4 comments:

  1. I am pretty mad also, I have my tree downloaded to Legacy but can't get my pictures to download at all.

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    1. I hope it gets better. Do they have any sync functionality working yet? They are supposed to be adding it.

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  2. I was mad at first but then I calmed down . Ancestry is a businesd and they have that right. I am a consumer and I have the right to take my money elsewhere. I will miss the tree sync and Ancesty is not getting my money. Simple as that.

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    Replies
    1. It sounds like they are contracted with RootsMagic to provide tree sync going forward. So some good news!

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