Health & Fitness
Picking Out Genealogy Software - Part 2: On-premise programs
This article is the second in a two-part series discussing the selection of a family tree program. The last post offered some pros and cons of cloud vs computer based or on-premise programs and then looked at a couple cloud-based solutions. This article will focus on programs you install and run on your own computer.
When choosing a genealogy program, it’s helpful to first consider and possibly list what features might be important to you. Then using your list, you can fill in each program you might choose and check if it has the features you want. Here is a link to an image of my own list where I compared features from a few of the more popular genealogy programs available:
Find out what's happening in Genevawith free, real-time updates from Patch.
If you take a look at my list, you’ll see I have some fairly basic requirements. Because of this, most of the programs offer the features I need and would work quite well. However, only one, Family Tree Maker, will synchronize my family tree with the one I keep on Ancestry.com. Because the cost of that program is reasonable, this is the program I chose to purchase. If you plan on maintaining a tree on Ancestry.com yet still want to take advantage of all the features a computer program offers, you might also want to look more closely at Family Tree Maker. The key benefit is it will save you the time of having to input data twice.
If synchronizing trees is not that important, then the other programs offer the same or possibly more features than Family Tree Maker. Because a program like Gramps is free and others such as RootsMagic and Legacy offer free versions, you could download and install them all to try them out. That way you can determine if you like the interface and layout of the program before making your final choice.
Find out what's happening in Genevawith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Not all of the features I have in my list might be important to other people, and some will obviously have different operating systems. But as a minimum I would encourage you to make sure the program you choose allows for import and export of gedcom files - a standard genealogy file format. That way you can easily exchange data with other family members, and someday, if necessary, you can always transfer your tree to another program.
If you want to check out some other programs, below are links to two other comparison charts with a much longer list of features and programs:
And here are the links to the programs I list in my comparison chart:
If you already use a genealogy program, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts about what features are important to you. Or if you have any questions about genealogy programs, you can either ask in the comment section or send me an email at pamelabroviak at gmail dot com.
