MyHeritage.com is one of the world’s major family tree and genealogy websites, ranking #3 after Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org*. In terms of family trees, MyHeritage is more like Ancestry than FamilySearch in that users create separate family trees, unlike FamilySearch Family Tree, whose goal is to create a single collaborative family tree. As of 2021, there are 81 million family trees with 4.7 billion profiles at MyHeritage, but but there’s a lot of duplication among those profiles. MyHeritage also has 15.7 billion “historical” records of varying quality and 5.2 million people in their DNA database. Having already reviewed the other major genealogy websites Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org Family Tree, Geni.com, and WikiTree.com, I thought it was time to review MyHeritage.
To be honest, I’ve put off reviewing MyHeritage for 2 years because I don’t like what they did to Geni.com when they bought it (see my post about Geni.com for an explanation), and I think their subscriptions are overpriced. So you’ve been warned that I’m biased about MyHeritage, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be fair.
FREEMIUM BUSINESS MODEL
MyHeritage operates on a multi-tier freemium business model where a family tree of 250 people is free, but the feature set is extremely limited. To build a larger family tree, use advanced matching features, and/or view historical records, you must pay for a subscription plan. The Complete package consisting of an unlimited family tree, historical records, and all features is $299 per year ($199 for the first year). The comparable All Access membership at Ancestry.com is $398 per year (FamilySearch is completely free). I have nothing against freemium websites, or even paying for genealogy websites. However, I think that $129 or $209 per year for 2500-person or unlimited trees, respectively, is too much, especially when MyHeritage benefits from all the data you upload, and you can have multiple unlimited trees at Ancestry.com for free. Granted, you get Smart Matches, DNA features, and other features, depending on the subscription, but Smart Matches are just possible matches to other family trees. To get historical records and Record Matches, you must pay an extra $99 to $189 per year, which I think is too expensive given the quality of the “records” (more below).
I think the quality of the historical record sets at Ancestry and FamilySearch is better, and FamilySearch is a bargain, since it’s free. Speaking of FamilySearch, almost 1 billion of MyHeritage’s records are simply FamilySearch Family Tree profiles, which are free to view and even edit, if you so choose. But perhaps there are some record sets at MyHeritage that are not available digitally anywhere else or that contain records about your ancestors. If you have access to any libraries, you could check whether they subscribe to MyHeritage Library Edition, provided in partnership with EBSCO. However, I wonder how many libraries actually have it. Neither my city, county, nor state library databases include MyHeritage, and I live in a large city in Texas.
Fortunately, you can try the Basic plan for free, and there’s also a 14-day trial of the Data plan, which offers full access to all the record collections and all the features. Be aware that you must provide a credit card or Paypal when you sign up, so be sure to set a reminder at the 14-day point in case you want to cancel the subscription.
FEATURES
Historical Records
Let’s dive into what a $189 per year Data subscription gets you. The following table lists the top 20 record collections by number of records:
| Collection | Records |
| MyHeritage Family Trees | 4,718,041,373 |
| Newspaper Name Index, USA and Canada | 1,057,276,078 |
| FamilySearch Family Tree | 992,707,466 |
| U.S. Public Records Index | 816,055,494 |
| U.S. City Directories (Images) | 561,503,516 |
| Historical Books – Index of Authors and People Mentioned, 1811-2003 | 494,147,159 |
| MyHeritage photos & docs (Images) | 441,412,203 |
| France, Vital Records Index | 357,634,212 |
| Geni World Family Tree | 316,723,506 |
| Authors of Scholarly Articles | 276,247,688 |
| Inventors of historical patents (Images) | 258,995,387 |
| U.S. Yearbooks Name Index, 1890-1979 (Images) (FREE) | 255,383,800 |
| U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims, 1936-2007 | 240,605,491 |
| Search Connect™ – Searches by MyHeritage Members (FREE) | 214,924,480 |
| England & Wales, Birth Index, 1837-2005 (Images) | 208,383,313 |
| England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975 | 192,689,358 |
| Sweden Household Examination Books | 158,165,291 |
| France, Church Baptisms and Civil Births (Images) | 154,475,930 |
| France, Church Burials and Civil Deaths (Images) | 149,151,264 |
| 1940 United States Federal Census (Images) | 134,282,547 |
| Total | 11,998,805,556 |
The top 20 record collections contain almost 12 billion records, or 76% of all of MyHeritage’s records. But what does MyHeritage mean by “historical record”?
What’s a Record?
MyHeritage apparently defines “record” as any written or graphical account of the past. Notice that about 6.5 billion of the records come from a MyHeritage, FamilySearch, or Geni family tree. That is, most of those records are user-created. Each of the profiles I created at each of those websites is considered a record by MyHeritage. I guess I don’t have a problem with calling these profiles and other user-created items “records,” but what I do take issue with is treating them all equally. My profile of my 10th-great-grandmother, based on derivative sources containing secondary information is not as good as an original source with primary information. But MyHeritage offers potential Record Matches as if they are of equal quality, all with the potential to add new or improved information to your tree. You would have to dig into the Knowledge Base to get information on “Evaluating Your Smart Matches™ and Record Matches on MyHeritage.” In fairness, MyHeritage is not the only website that treats all records equally; Ancestry and FamilySearch are also guilty of it. The bottom line is that it’s up to users to evaluate the quality of the records they find and not just unthinkingly copy information into their trees.
Record Quality
As I said, a good 6.5 billion of MyHeritage’s records are user generated profiles in family trees; that’s 41% of the total. What of the rest of the top 20 collections? Only 1.7 billion of the top 20 collections are images (not counting the 441K user-provided images, which include things like flags, coats of arms, and generic place-holder images), and of those, about 208K of the records are images of indexes, which you would then want to cross-reference with the original sources. That leaves about 1.5 billion images from sources such as the “U.S. City Directories,” “France, Church Baptisms and Civil Births,” and “Church Burials and Civil Deaths.” These collections have the potential to provide high quality records, especially the French collections, which MyHeritage obtained through their acquisition of Filae.com. The images are copies of actual parish and civil registers. Unfortunately, MyHeritage does not provide the inclusive dates of many of their collections, so you don’t know if it’s even possible for your ancestors to be included. For example, the description of the “France, Church Baptisms and Civil Births” collection states that recording of baptisms began in 1539 but that “records prior to 1700 are rare in this collection.” While the quality of some of the collections is good, you have to ask yourself how useful they would be for you. Personally, I don’t have any French ancestors that I know of, so the French collections would not be useful to me.
In addition, you should look at how much the MyHeritage collections duplicate what’s already available to you through other resources, such as Ancestry.com. MyHeritage’s “U.S. Public Records Index” has 816K records from 1970 to 2010, while Ancestry’s has 821K records from 1950 to 1993; although the years’ coverage is different, there’s still bound to be some overlap, along with many different records. But as Randy Seaver points out in a comment, the MyHeritage Public Records Index “groups family members together for many entries,” which neither Ancestry nor FamilySearch do. MyHeritage, Ancestry, and FamilySearch all have digitized and indexed city directories, yearbooks, and US censuses, with FamilySearch providing all of their offerings for free. In fact, both Ancestry and FamilySearch provide indexed images of the 1940 United States Federal Census (as well as other years) for free. Which raises a good point: you can search the MyHeritage record collections and get Record Matches for free, and if you find a promising result, search for the same record at Ancestry and/or FamilySearch, or some other site providing free access to the collection.
But that’s not very convenient; why not just keep your family tree at Ancestry and avail yourself of the thousands of collections included in their Free Index Collections search and Record Hints technology?
Just a few more points about the quality and utility of MyHeritage’s records. As noted above, almost 1 billion of their records consist of FamilySearch Family Tree profiles, which are completely free to view and edit at FamilySearch. I don’t understand why this collection isn’t free at MyHeritage. Instead, MyHeritage provides Search Connect for free, which is just an index of searches by other MyHeritage users so that you can try to connect with other users searching for the same people. I like that the U.S. Yearbooks Name Index, 1890-1979, is free to search and even view the images of the yearbook pages. The images in this collection even have the option of being colorized using MyHeritage In Color (more below). So the US yearbook collection seems to be a high quality and potentially useful collection, especially since the coverage dates are given.
The “Inventors of historical patents” collection is one of the largest collection of images, but while possibly interesting, how useful is it? How likely are you to have ancestors who filed a patent? If you do think you have inventor ancestors, you might try the Google Patent search for worldwide patents or one of the US Patent and Trademark Office’s searches. The same goes for the “Authors of Scholarly Articles” collection, which is an index of “names of authors of millions of scholarly articles . . . collected from over 50,000 journals and open-access repositories from all over the world.” There are probably better sources for this type of information, including the free Google Scholar.
Lastly, the “U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims, 1936-2007,” is what I consider a high quality, high utility database, consisting of information from applications for Social Security Numbers and/or claims. The information includes the name of the applicant (often the birth and married names of women), birth date and place, and the names of the parents (again, often the birth name of the mother). But Ancestry also has this index. Of note is that MyHeritage provides the “U.S. Social Security Death Index (SSDI)” for free, as do Ancestry, FamilySearch, Findmypast, Fold3, GenealogyBank, and SteveMorse.org.
Record Matches
In addition to providing searchable record collections, MyHeritage offers their Record Matches feature, which automatically matches people in your MyHeritage family tree with records in their collection. Of course, these are actually potential matches, which you must review and evaluate to determine if they’re real matches containing useful information. And you must have a Data or Complete subscription to view most records. Record Matches are shown in several places: in the family tree and profile views they’re indicated by brown icons for that particular person, and the upper left-hand corner of each page contains an icon showing the total number of Record Matches. You can also receive an email notification whenever there are new Record Matches.
Clicking any of the Record Matches icons brings up the pending matches of the person, or all matches in the tree, as applicable. Then you can select a match to review, which brings up a side-by-side comparison of the person in your tree and the person in the potentially matching record, such as the following for Joseph Ferris.
Notice how MyHeritage helpfully highlights new and improved info; it can also highlight different info. But I take exception to it describing info as “improved.” There’s no way it can tell that data in a record is better than info that’s already in a tree. It would be better to stick with “new” or “different.” Only the user can determine if info is improved or not, based on the quality of the record or the other sources attached to it. In the case of this WikiTree record, the date of birth is listed as “uncertain,” with two dates listed. The WikiTree profile includes several sources, only one of which, Find a Grave, gives an exact date, without any sources. So I certainly would not conclude that the WikiTree info is an improvement over my existing info, but I would make a note of the alternative dates and places. After comparing and evaluating information, you can either confirm or reject the match. If you reject it, the record won’t show up again, but if you confirm it, you can either save all new and improved information with one click of a button (I won’t be doing that with Joseph Ferris) or copy separate pieces of information manually. You can also extract information for other people on the same record, or go to any related records that might show up.
I like how a source citation for a record is added to the profile, but I don’t like that it adds formatting codes to the citation but does not include the website URL of the record. You would have to edit each profile after you confirmed a record match to add the URL, which would be very tedious. I also like how you can rate the quality of each record; MyHeritage uses the same certainty assessment descriptors as the GEDCOM Standard, presumably so they can be exported to GEDCOM files.
Overall, the Record Matches feature is above average. The quality of the matches depends on the information in your tree; the more information there is for each person, the more relevant the matches will be. Most of the false matches I receive seem to be for people who lack information such as birth or death information. Also, as Randy Seaver points out in a comment, MyHeritage’s “Record Matches are complete – add someone to your family tree and the Record Matches run within a week, and are complete,” at least until a new database is added.
SuperSearch
Of course, in addition to using Record Matches, you can search for records manually. You can either search specific record collections or do a global search of all collections, what MyHeritage calls their “SuperSearch” feature, but they work the same way. You get to the SuperSearch page by clicking on “Research this person” from their profile or family tree view, or from Research > Search all records at the top of the page. Doing so brings up a page where you can enter criteria such as names, birth, death, family members, and other events, as shown below.
You can set some fields to exact or approximate matches, but your settings will have a big effect on the results. I found that exact matches for dates and places were too restrictive, producing mostly matches for other family trees. However, unchecking some exact match boxes or using some +/- years produced too many results, 10,000+ in some categories. How you spell place names for exact matches obviously affects the results; for example, Waynesburg, Greene County, Pennsylvania, is much more restrictive than just including the state. And if you specify an exact death date or place, you won’t get any records that don’t have death information, such as most census or birth records. Search results are sorted with the most relevant results first. But sometimes SuperSearch didn’t find a record that I knew existed, even when I didn’t use exact match. For example, it didn’t find the BillionGraves entry for Robert Morris using the full birth date (not exact), but when I removed the day and month, the record was found. By the way, BillionGraves is another free record collection, which is a good thing, since the website is free to use.
Once you’ve searched for someone using SuperSearch, MyHeritage saves your search in their Search Connect database, and you can get periodic email notifications of new search results, which is a nice feature. The quality and utility of these results depend on your original search criteria. You can turn off these emails if you no longer need them.
Getting too few or too many results is a common problem with search engines, and you just have to experiment to see which settings and criteria produce the most usable results. I would rate MyHeritage’s SuperSearch as average, on par with Ancestry.com.
Smart Matches
Another type of match on MyHeritage is the Smart Match, which is a potential match to a profile in another user’s family tree. Smart Matches are indicated similarly to Record Matches, except they’re show by a circular arrow icon, usually green (see above). The way you review and evaluate them is also similar to Record Matches. As with Record Matches, Smart Matches show the information that is new or improved, but only you can decide if the information is improved or even valid. Viewing Smart Matches doesn’t require any special subscriptions, but sometimes not all information in a potentially matching tree is visible due to the privacy settings of that tree, so you will have to contact the owner if you’re interested in more information. For example, the following Smart Match for one of my ancestors contains parents whom I don’t have in my tree, but unfortunately, the Smart Match comparison doesn’t list any sources. (Note also the shamrock pictures; these are included in the “MyHeritage photos & docs” collection of 441K records; not very useful, eh?)
I may want to contact the owner of this tree to find out his sources for the parents of my ancestor, but just from looking at the full profile for this person, the sources are just other family trees, either on MyHeritage or other websites. I followed the chain of source citations for Richard Downing to two prior sources, and they were all Smart Matches to other MyHeritage trees, none with any other sources. My experience with Smart Matches is that the quality of most trees is very low, meaning that, if they include source citations at all, they’re usually to other family trees, not to primary sources. Still, they can provide clues that I can investigate by searching primary or better secondary sources myself. In general, I don’t put a high priority on checking Smart Matches because there can be a lot of them, most with information identical to my trees, but rarely any with new and useful information. As with Record Matches, you can receive email alerts when there are new matches, or you can turn these alerts off.
Also like Record Matches, if you decide there’s valid information in a Smart Match that you want to use, there are several ways to copy the information into your tree (with a source citation that even includes the URL): 1. Copy all new and “improved” (i.e., different) information just for that person. 2. Copy all new and improved information for the person and their immediate relatives individually (if applicable). 3. Copy all new and improved information for the person and all their immediate relatives in one fell swoop (but should you?). 4. Manually edit each profile. I prefer to manually edit each person’s profile so I have complete control over the information, but I suppose you could extract all information and then go back and edit it. In general, though, I find the Smart Match feature to work as advertised but to be of below average usefulness.
Joining Other Family Sites
In addition to contacting the owners of other family trees using MyHeritage’s messaging feature, you can request to join other family sites if there’s a lot of information you’d like to see. Depending on how the site owner has set the permissions, you might even be able to contribute to the other site. You can also invite and accept requests from other people to join your site. This feature is a good way for families to jointly work on their family trees, share family information and photos, celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, and even organize family reunions. Ancestry.com also allows users to share and collaborate on their trees, but it doesn’t have as many of the social features as MyHeritage. For this reason, I rate the sharing of family trees feature on MyHeritage as above average.
Family Tree
Records, Record Matches, and Smart Matches are important ways of growing your family tree, but how do you get your family tree into MyHeritage? If you’re starting from scratch, you can use the website to add people and their information. When you sign up for MyHeritage, a profile for yourself is automatically created, and this is usually the first person you’ll start with, unless you’re creating a tree for someone else. You can easily add or edit information on a person who already exists in your tree from the tree or profile view, but apparently you can add people to the tree only from the tree view by attaching them to an existing profile. You can’t add people to a tree who aren’t somehow related; for example, you can’t add friends, associates, or neighbors. Even adding both natural and adoptive sets of parents can be difficult due to a technical limitation, as MyHeritage admits. On Ancestry.com, you can add many types of alternate parents, such as adopted, step, or foster parents, although you can’t add otherwise unrelated people, as far as I can tell. You can also add people both from the tree or profile view. So the MyHeritage web-based tree builder isn’t as robust as Ancestry’s.
But MyHeritage has another option for creating a family tree called Family Tree Builder (FTB), which is a free app available for both Windows and Mac. I already reviewed FTB, especially its import and export capabilities, so I won’t go into any detail. However, one good thing about FTB is that it can sync your tree between FTB and MyHeritage. You can work on your family tree in FTB and the changes will be copied to your MyHeritage tree and vice versa. FTB also has some of the same features as MyHeritage, including Smart Matches, Record Matches, Consistency Checker, and Instant Discoveries. FTB is a full-featured genealogy application with all the features needed to build and display family trees, including important privacy settings. FTB is easy to use, and you can either create a tree from scratch or download an existing tree from MyHeritage. Interestingly, you can easily add multiple parents to people using FTB, as well as add completely unrelated people. But otherwise, FTB is very similar to the website.
Overall, FTB is an average app compared to other full-featured genealogy apps, but if you’re using MyHeritage anyway, it’s a good way to keep your tree in sync on the website, your desktop PC, and mobile devices.
There are mobile apps similar to FTB for Android and iOS called MyHeritage: Family tree & DNA. I did not test these apps, but from their descriptions, they seem to have features similar to FTB. However, one thing in the descriptions caught my eye: “Start your family tree by entering a few names, and MyHeritage will do the rest.” I cannot stress strongly enough that no app or website can build a family tree for you, and MyHeritage should not even suggest that they can. Doing genealogy requires human intelligence to evaluate information and draw conclusions. While MyHeritage uses artificial intelligence for some of their features, no AI has yet been created that can replace a human genealogist.
The last method to get your tree into MyHeritage if you already have a family tree is to import it from a GEDCOM file. This can be done either by uploading the GEDCOM to MyHeritage or importing it into FTB and then syncing with MyHeritage. Both ways work equally as well, but as I pointed out in my review of FTB, it has some problems importing (and exporting) GEDCOM files. If you have any of the data highlighted in red in the FTB column of the GEDCOM Crosswalk spreadsheet, you’ll probably have to add them manually.
Privacy
Privacy is an important consideration when handling personally identifying information, especially for living people. MyHeritage has a fairly robust Privacy Policy covering your personal information, including any DNA tests you’ve taken, and the personal information of living people in your family tree. However, you cannot make individual profiles or facts private on MyHeritage. You can only do this using FTB. This is a rather serious shortcoming of the MyHeritage website. If you don’t want to use FTB but want to keep certain facts private, you’ll either have to obfuscate them manually or leave them out.
Multimedia
Like most modern genealogy websites and apps, MyHeritage enables and in fact encourages you to add media to your family tree, especially images. All media that you add to your tree can be searched and viewed by other users, except for media that you add to albums that you make private in the privacy settings. You can add images, videos, and audios in several different formats to your tree, and doing so is easy. MyHeritage has several interesting features that apply to images:
MyHeritage in Color: You saw an example of this in action in the page from my high school yearbook above. The original was in black and white. Apparently this feature uses AI to colorize black and white photos. I think the results can look realistic, but MyHeritage states “there are cases where it has no way of knowing what the true colors were (for example, for specific items of clothing).” Some people may like this feature, but I prefer to see the original photos as they were, whether black and white or color.
The MyHeritage Photo Enhancer also uses AI, in this case to upscale the resolution of both black and white and color photos. I used the Photo Enhancer in conjunction with MyHeritage in Color to upscale and restore the color of the photo on the left, producing the photo on the right. While the color is still a bit off, I felt the result was good enough to put on my relative’s Find a Grave memorial. Of note is that the resolution was nearly doubled.
Deep Nostalgia is another photo feature using AI (or deep learning), in this case to animate faces in still photos, producing short videos in which the faces blink, smile, and move their heads. Deep Nostalgia does work, producing fairly realistic videos, although the eyes look a little shifty to me. The main giveaway is that shadows don’t move with heads. I don’t see the point of this feature and won’t use it, but obviously many people do like it, if only for the novelty of it.
Photo Repair, the final photo feature I’ll mention, can repair damage visible in digital photos, such as tears, creases, or stains. I found that it works pretty well for light but not heavy damage. See the before and after comparison below.
MyHeritage has set limits on the number of photos free Basic plan users can use MyHeritage In Color or Photo Enhancer with to only 10 photos, while they can apply Photo Repair to “several” photos, and modified photos will be watermarked. Using these features above the limits requires a subscription.
Consistency Checker
Moving on to other features, MyHeritage has what they call a Consistency Checker that can check for potential errors in your tree, primarily with dates and ages. A minimum of a Premium Plus plan is required to make full use of this feature, but I was able to see a few problems with a Premium plan, probably as a teaser. The potential problems included mothers being rather young at the birth of a child, an event occurring before birth or after death, and people being married at a young age. These would all be good things to check. However, another problem was a person having a different name spelling from most of the other people in the tree, with the advice to “Replace last name of Margaret N Patter with the more commonly used ‘Potter’.” Most of the problems identified were people having more than one birth or death date. I don’t consider different name spellings or redundant dates problems at all. Patter and Potter are the names of two different families, so it would be a mistake to change Margaret’s last name. As always in genealogy, human intelligence doesn’t take the place of a computer algorithm.
Instant Discoveries
Instant Discoveries use Record Matches and Smart Matches to find new people or photos for your family tree while supposedly filtering out incorrect matches. But once again, MyHeritage cannot take the place of human intelligence in genealogy. Here’s a Person Discovery I received from MyHeritage about Maria Barbara Hammelbagin informing me I could add an entire branch to my family tree with 40 people in just a few clicks! There’s no mention of evaluating the source and drawing conclusions from its evidence. The first screen about the discovery simply asks if my Maria is the same as E. Henneberg’s; they are, but that doesn’t mean I can willy-nilly add all 40 people to my tree. I’ve done extensive research on Maria and determined that her birth name was closer to “Hammelsbach” than “Hammelbagin” (which is a sort of feminine version), but in no case was she ever a “Himmelman.” This is one of those errors that is impossible to eradicate from family trees, thanks to hundreds if not thousands of people copying information from family trees on the Internet without properly evaluating it. Also note the pictures attached to each person in the example Person Discovery; MyHeritage also offered this image as a Photo Discovery I could add to my tree with the comment, “Your direct ancestor (8 generations) Maria Barbara Hammelbagin appears in this photo.” Not to nitpick, but not only is the image not a photo, it also doesn’t depict a person, let alone Maria. To be fair, the majority of the Photo Discoveries I have received are either photos of people or their grave markers.
As with Smart Matches and many Record Matches, I don’t find the Instant Discoveries feature very useful, since most of them come from poorly sourced and improperly grafted family trees on MyHeritage, Geni, and FamilySearch. Since most Instant Discoveries require a Premium Plus or Complete plan to see all details, you have to ask whether this feature is worth the money.
Backup
MyHeritage has a monthly subscription Backup Service that is separate from their paid plans. The service covers all trees that are part of a specific site and backs up all media attached to each tree. Backups can be restored. I actually don’t see much utility in this service, other than if you wanted to roll back your tree to the way it was on a previous date. Presumably MyHeritage has backups of all of the contents of their servers that they could restore in the event their main server was damaged. I have never used the service to restore a tree. I only have it because MyHeritage provided it to me when they bought Geni and replaced lifetime Pro subscriptions with 5-year memberships.
Reports
Getting a family tree into MyHeritage and growing it is only half of the equation. The other half is getting the tree out again in the form of charts and reports, or exporting it, so that you can share your tree or preserve it for posterity. You can certainly just view your tree using the profile or tree (family or pedigree) views. These views are adequate for many purposes, to include sharing your tree with other people. However, you can also create the following types of charts: Bowtie, Close family, Ancestors, Descendants, Hourglass, Sun chart, Fan chart, and All-in-one. Charts can be customized with the facts and number of generations to include and are easy to create. There are up to 18 styles to choose from for most charts, including some with plain designs, which is a good thing, since some of the designs are too ornate for my taste, but undoubtedly many people like them. In addition to saving charts as PDFs, they can be ordered as posters, which is a nice feature.
To produce a report, you must pick the “Family Book” option and then select one or more of the following reports for a particular person: Ancestors, Descendants, Direct relations, Indirect relations, Family trees, Notes, Sources, Index of places, Index of dates, Index of individuals. Clearly many of these reports are intended to be part of a family book, such as Notes, Sources, and the Indexes. Aside from picking the person and the paper size (A4 or letter), there are no customization options for these reports. For example, you can’t limit the number of generations or select the facts to include. I also don’t like how the source citations include the default source quality of “Unreliable or estimated.” When I imported my GEDCOM file into MyHeritage, most of my sources did not contain anything for source quality, but MyHeritage defaulted to “Unreliable or estimated,” which is a problem in itself. I also don’t care for the formatting of the source citations, which refer to all of the sources by number, and all of them include the word “page,” assuming that every source is paginated and that the citations don’t already include the word “page” or abbreviation for it. I then have to refer to the Sources report and cross-reference the source number to see what the source was. It would be better if each source number was hyperlinked or bookmarked to the full source so that users can easily go back and forth between them. Otherwise, full and short citations should be used, even though they take up more space. I rate the MyHeritage charts as above average but the reports as below average.
DNA
MyHeritage DNA is a major service added in 2016 that includes autosomal DNA test kit sales and tools to view the results. It’s comparable to Ancestry DNA in terms of features and cost, although MyHeritage kits are usually about $20 cheaper than Ancestry’s, but MyHeritage doesn’t provide prepaid shipping to return kits, whereas Ancestry does. A whole article could be written about MyHeritage DNA, so I will just hit the highlights.
Database Size: MyHeritage has 5.2 million people in their database, compared to over 20 million for Ancestry and 12 million plus for 23andMe. Clearly in terms of database size, the odds of finding DNA matches are better at Ancestry and 23andMe than MyHeritage, but then MyHeritage might have a match to someone who could help you overcome a brick wall. I have 11,234 matches at MyHeritage and 45,579 at Ancestry, a ratio that matches the total numbers. However, the vast majority of my Ancestry matches are probably in the US, Canada, or the UK, while my MyHeritage matches are all over the world. MyHeritage is more of an international website than Ancestry (see below under Multi-Language Support). Since 21% of my ethnicity is Eastern European, it might be very useful for me to contact some of my 100-plus matches from Eastern Europe – if only I spoke a Slavic language! While contacting a match is as easy as the click of a button, and the MyHeritage interface is available in many languages, it does not (yet) translate messages into other languages. Of course, there are tools like Google Translate or Bing Translator for this (although they’re not completely accurate).
To help you organize your DNA matches, you can star, label, group, and comment on them. You can also filter and sort matches in several different ways, including by whether they have a family tree, something you can’t do at Ancestry. I’ve found that many people at Ancestry either don’t have a family tree, their tree is unlinked, or it’s private. In contrast, about 80% of my MyHeritage matches have a family tree of more than one person, so it may be easier to determine my relationship with them than at Ancestry.
MyHeritage DNA has several other tools for exploring your matches, including lists of ancestral surnames, shared matches, and a chromosome browser, which can show triangulated segments. If both you and a match have a family tree, MyHeritage displays the first six generations, but there’s a problem with it: it displays only my mom’s side of the tree, not my dad’s, even though I have both sides in my tree at MyHeritage.
Theory of Family Relativity: This much-hyped feature uses all of the data in the MyHeritage databases and family trees to provide a theory of how exactly you might be related to one of your DNA matches, beyond the usual estimated relationships based on shared DNA. Here’s an example:
Notice that the theory is based on five family trees (with four additional paths), but the first tree on the left provides no useful information. Also, the theory is expressed as a probability, which is good, but there isn’t enough information for me to confirm whether the theory is correct or not. I would have to contact the owner of the England web site to determine if <Private> Miller is the same as Mildred Lenora Miller. But even if they are, what would that get me besides a new 5th cousin? The information would only be useful if the England, Holley, or Private family sites contain more valid information about the Cockrell or Dawson families than I already have. But this is certainly a possibility, and I can see how the feature could help save time in determining how matches are related and whether contacting them might be worthwhile.
AutoClusters is another potential time-saving tool to help organize your DNA matches. It groups together shared DNA matches that probably descend from the same ancestor. Here’s mine, without the names:
AutoClusters are run in the background, and you receive an email with a zip file containing the chart, a CSV file with more detailed statistics, and an explanatory file. The clusters in red in the upper left-hand corner contain the most matches, while the one in yellow in the lower right-hand corner contains the least. I think you could approach these clusters in two ways: the big cluster might provide the biggest bang for the buck, while the smaller clusters might be more manageable and easier to start with. The AutoClusters chart page included direct links to each match so I could review the available information about it. I picked a 3-person cluster with a cousin I know and was able to determine my exact relationship with one of the shared matches but not the other, mainly because he didn’t have a family tree. For the match I did determine, I could add information to my tree about more cousins, so the feature was useful for that as well as organizing an approach to analyzing my matches.
Uploading & Downloading Raw DNA Results: MyHeritage accepts raw autosomal DNA data from Family Tree DNA, 23andMe, and AncestryDNA. Note that it only allows data for personal use, “not related to any law enforcement or forensic investigation.” You can also download your raw MyHeritage DNA data.
Privacy: As I said, MyHeritage has a robust Privacy Policy that covers your DNA test results. Taking a DNA test and sharing the results with others is fraught with privacy and ethical concerns, because you have DNA in common with your relatives, and some of them may not like having their DNA on the Internet. Police departments have even used public DNA databases to solve cold murder cases, prompting most of those databases (including MyHeritage) to tighten their privacy policies. I’m not going to get into the ethics of sharing your DNA; I just want to point out that MyHeritage has several settings that control the information that’s shared with other users from your DNA results. In addition, MyHeritage claims it “is the only DNA company that has pledged never to sell users’ data to any third party.”
Help
There are two main places to get help on the MyHeritage website: in the Help Center or the Knowledge Base, both available from the Help menu in the main menu bar. The Help Center has detailed textual information about each of the features on the website and FTB. The Knowledge Base is more of an education center, with both text-based articles and videos on how to use MyHeritage to do genealogy. I mostly used the Help Center to get information and figure out how to use things, but if you prefer videos, you might like the Knowledge Base better. Overall I was able to find all the answers to my questions about MyHeritage, between the Help Center and the Knowledge Base, so the help provided was above average.
Multi-Language Support
The MyHeritage website and FTB app are available in 42 languages, probably more than any other genealogy website or app. This is probably why MyHeritage is so popular outside of English-speaking countries. Note that the language you select applies only to the interface, not the information you enter.
Overall Impression
MyHeritage is a full-featured genealogy website with companion PC and mobile applications. It is perfectly capable of helping you grow a family tree and share it with other people. Compared to the nearest comparable competitor, Ancestry, I would rate it below Ancestry because of the quality and utility of its record collections. I think its subscription plans are overpriced, especially the family tree plans. It may be best suited to people with fewer than 250 people in their tree, who can use the free Basic plan, or those with British or French roots. I keep a small family tree on MyHeritage mainly for cousin bait for my brick-wall lines. But I’ve had my tree there for ten years and have yet to make a productive cousin connection. In the end, only you can decide if using MyHeritage is worthwhile to you.
Disclosures
I have no conflicts of interest to report. I receive no compensation from MyHeritage, and I paid for a Premium family tree site plan.
The Family Tree Software Alternatives Series
Part 1: How to Scrub Your Data
Part 2: How to Get Your Tree out of FTM
Part 3: RootsMagic 7
Part 4: Reunion 11
Part 5: MacFamilyTree 8
Part 6: Family Tree Builder 8
Part 7: Heredis 2015
Part 8: Gramps 5
Part 9: iFamily for Mac
Part 10: GEDitCOM II
Part 11: Legacy Family Tree 8
Part 12: Ancestral Quest 14
Part 13: Family Historian 6
Part 14: Should You Stick with Family Tree Maker?
Part 15: Brother’s Keeper 7
Part 16: RootsMagic 8
How Well Does Ancestry.com Handle GEDCOM?
Family Tree Maker to GEDCOM to Other Apps Crosswalk
The Perils of Following the GEDCOM Standard
Why All Genealogy Apps Should Support GEDCOM 5.5.1
*Information current as of the date of this post
Great work, Keith. Thank you.
I rarely “search” MH for records – too many matches to trees and not enough ways to easily parse the list. I usually search by collection instead.
One feature I love on MH is the Public Records database groups family members together for many entries.
Another is that Record Matches are complete – add someone to your family tree and the Record Matches run within a week, and are complete.
Cheers — Randy
Good points, Randy, thanks!
Another solid article. I have found ancestors in turn-of-the-century government docs that are useful and were not retrieved via similar searches on Google Books, Archive.org, etc.
One important difference between it and Geni is that I believe the user controls the tree and can delete at will. Geni apparently owns your info once you upload. I uploaded a tree there in very early days of my research (and their existence). It’s riddled with errors, but Geni says I must correct each error individually and cannot remove the tree. Frustrating, and ultimately not very helpful for their other users.
Nancy, you’re correct about Geni. Their goal is similar to FamilySearch Family Tree and WikiTree, to create a single World Family Tree. Once a profile is connected to other parts of the tree, it cannot be deleted. It’s important to understand the goal of these collaborative family trees before contributing to them. I have reviewed all three of them.
Great overview, Keith. I agree with most of your main points.
I would add two things. First, some genealogical societies offer remote access to My Heritage Library Edition as part of their membership. This is a stripped-down version that offers access to the data collection, minus the newspapers. (As I understand it, NewspaperArchive is the source-of-source for My Heritage’s newspapers, so the products for libraries are separate.) But if what you want is to check MH every now and again for data you can’t get elsewhere, accessing MH Library Edition can be a much less expensive way to go, if your local public library or your gen society has it.
The main value of MyHeritage’s data for me, as a US researcher not working in the Eastern European records, is the US City Directories database. There are some nice search features, and it makes a good way to cross-check for directory entries that might be mis-indexed in Ancestry’s US City Directory database, where the indexing is poor.
I follow promotions and pick up a personal MyHeritage subscription every now and again to get access to the newspapers collection. When I don’t have a sub, I use the MH subscription via my gen society. My general advice, especially if you’re on a tight budget, is to use these lower-cost options to learn how to use the search engine and evaluate the data side, before you decide to pay for a data subscription. I do like the fact that you can purchase a separate data subscription at My Heritage if you aren’ interested in having a tree there. Use the videos on site and watch the free webinars at Legacy Family Tree webinars so you can see how the features are supposed to work before you buy.
Aside from that, I think your overview is spot-on. For many users who aren’t using the DNA and don’t need the geographical reach that MyHeritage is concentrating on, it is likely to be overpriced.
Thanks, Jan. I did mention the MyHeritage Library Edition, but I haven’t been able to find any libraries that subscribe to it. However, I hadn’t checked my local genealogy society, but they don’t have it, either. Apparently members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have free access to MyHeritage through a partnership with FamilySearch. Good advice about how to evaluate MyHeritage’s data offerings.
Another excellent article, Keith. Very thorough as usual.
One thing you didn’t analyse however, is the GEDCOM export from MyHeritage. You’ve done Family Tree Builder in the past, but I don’t believe you’ve done MyHeritage. Would be worth a full article, I’d think.
Thanks, Louis. I suspect that GEDCOM handling by MyHeritage will be very similar to Family Tree Builder, but I’ll take a look sometime.
The city directories address cross reference is a big feature that should be on everyone’s list as a reason to try a subscription. It is available in the library version that is available at many genealogical socities as a result of pandemic. MH may not add much for Wasps but it offers collections not available elsewhere.
A great comprehensive review Keith. Thank you.
As a FTDNA customer, I have a heavily discounted “complete” subscription whose price is guaranteed “for life.” At that price the subscription is reasonable.
I had been using Ancestry Library Edition at our public library, but since our head librarian is a technophobe, patrons have not been granted access from home despite ProQuest making that available due to COVID restrictions. Needless to say being able to use MH from home was a selling point.
I was initially disappointed in the SmartMatch feature, as it generated way too many matches based on other people’s trees, as opposed to vital records etc. My opinion changed/improved once I began using the SuperSearch feature.
Rick, just to clarify a few points: You got a MyHeritage Complete plan with a guaranteed price through FTDNA (Family Tree DNA)? When and how did you do that?
What do you like about SuperSearch?
For the past few years FTDNA has sent it’s customers an email containing a link “from their partners at My Heritage” for the MyHerritage Complete plan at a heavily discounted rate. This subscription price is supposed to be guaranteed “for life.” I’m in my first year of the subscription so I can not verify that fact for year two yet. I can verify that I have full access to any data I chose to search for.
As for SuperSearch, I have found that it returns different results, as in more vital records matches, than the “Discoveries” pages. The “Discoveries” pages return mostly matches to other trees on Geni, Family Search, etc. as you note in your review.
Thanks, Rich. I ignore most of the spam I get from FTDNA. I guess I should pay more attention lol! I dug through my email trash, and the last email I got about the MyHeritage Complete Plan was in May 2021, when they offered 55% off. They’re not currently offering 55% off, but they are offering 33% off for FTDNA users who are also not current MyHeritage subscribers at https://www.myheritage.com/partner/FTDNAMay2021?utm_source=external&utm_campaign=partner_FTDNAMay2021. Users who are logged in to a MyHeritage account must log out to see this offer.