MyHeritageReviews 5,560

MyHeritage is an Israel based service with satellite offices in the US. If you are comfortable with sharing all of your family history with complete strangers including the DNA information as a result of collaboration between 23andMe then this is the site for you. I has fewer records, by a large margin, than Ancestry and my own personal experience with the company was less than satisfactory. However, my major complaint with all the online genealogical services is that you provide you do all the work by researching and recording your family tree and they then get to exploit that research for a profit. As a long time researcher, I find this model abhorrent. By all means use the service for research (I personally use Ancestry because of its much larger records base), but I record all of my data offline and make it available to proven relatives through my own website. A second reason is that many of the "family trees" that show up on these sites are very poorly researched and documented, are generally incorrect, and multiply to other branches of the family like a virus which only amplify the errors. In that respect, and in my opinion, the best genealogical software was The Master Genealogist (TMG) (now out of business) which I continue to use because of the power and flexibility of the database design. I also have Ancestry, Roots Magic, GRAMPS, and Legacy programs but do not use them because they are " amateurish" by comparison. Although I self-host my own website, the best genealogical software for online genealogical research that I have found is "Webtrees" a free and feature rich program that rivals any of the commercial programs. The operator(s) of Webtrees offer web-hosting services for an acceptable price. In my opinion, if you are a serious researcher, get a copy of TMG and read TMG Tips to see the power of the database model, or use Webtrees to develop your family tree. Only use the online services for research - don't let them exploit your work to attract more unwary customers and fatten their bottom line!

I have been embarking on my family search for a year but only made progress when I used My Heritage in the last few months. It seems to have more participation than the others, speaking at least as it relates to my European ancestors. The support has been great as I was a novice user and needed many questions answered along the way. Thanks to My Heritage I have found 2 relatives when hope was lost-- with links to more relatives to follow.

I am extremely disappointed in MyHeritage. I made the mistake of signing up for a free trial and not cancelling at the end of the trial. Understandably, my card was charged. I quickly emailed to rectify, but was given the same run-around by customer service as another commenter and only got 50% back. It was like a sales call where I was told to actually keep my account and they made it seem like they were doing me a favor by giving me a discount to a service I didn't want. I re-read the terms and they state that they value customer satisfaction and would fully refund if cancelled before 30 days. I was not given this luxury. When I emailed them back about it, they re-activated my account and called me and left a voicemail saying the "fixed" my account that that I accepted their offer and I assume by that statement I was now left with an account to a website I had zero interest in.

I can't believe the runaround I have had in trying to delete my account. I sent a very personally unflattering email the last time I tried to delete my account, but it worked and I'm only out about $75 CAD.

I can't recommend this website.

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Update:
You will see that MyHeritage has responded to all negative posts, like mine.

Nothing has resulted in my contacting them. They couldn't even find a record of my account and after sending all the emails and Paypal receipts - nothing changed. They said "We see that we've refunded you 50% as per your request (I didn't request it - it was all i was offered) if there is anything else we can do, please don't hesitate to contact us"

I cannot explain how unhappy I am with this whole ordeal. Its such a waste of time and money.;

I have been researching and recording my family history online for more than ten years through various online sites including the most commonly used but had reached the limits of what I thought was available a couple of years ago. Recently I followed a link on facebook to the MyHeritage site and as I couldn't find out much about it, went ahead with signing up for the free trial period. The available access gave me no more benefits than Ancestry and appeared heavily USA influenced, however my ancestry is completely UK, Europe and Australia, so rather than waste my time, clicked the button to delete my account.

I received a very personal and genuine email from someone on the MyHeritage Support Team in response to my request offering an upgrade to give myself a better chance to access the features. I had since noticed there is a UK base for MyHeritage so went ahead. I have to say this is the best family history research site I have used so far. After importing my family tree, through the links to FamilySearch and other databases, I have been able to add information and new members to my family tree. I found the site user-friendly with good features as mentioned as well as the capacity to look at detailed family statistics. There is also a link to download free the MyHeritage Family Tree Builder. Overall, I have found MyHeritage to be very good value with the personal service and support *****

I've been able to connect with family members abroad I didn't know I had! I've read stories of heroic relatives going through wars, braving the sailing ships of the Trading Companies, and even packing up their homes and emigrate because of the Highland Clearances of Scotland. What starts with a SmartMatch from someone else's tree quickly escalates into another adventure through time.
MyHeritage charges a basic fee for their service, but has many free links to databases with countless names, facts, and even photographs. Every morning as I sip my coffee, I can peruse the matches that were automatically made overnight, and I'm never disappointed.
As you can tell, I'm VERY pleased with the program and the times I offered feedback to customer service, I was responded to promptly, professionally, and personally (not an automated response). If you're at all interested in genealogy, this is the place to be!

Hi
I have discovered that payment have been take without my agreement, I cannot access the my account has it keeps saying incorrect password, I try to reset but never receive the reset email.
I have tried contacting customer service with no joy at all.
My advice to anyone considering using this website is DON'T

Après trois ans d'interruption de suivi de mon site, et suite à un changement d'adresse mail, j'ai eu beaucoup de mal à consulter à nouveau mon site comme je l'avais construit. Mais avec l'aide d'Alexandra de Myheritage contactée à de nombreuses reprises, tout est rentré dans l'ordre. Merci à elle pour sa compétence, son efficacité, sa réactivité et sa gentillesse. Je n'hésiterai pas à la recontacter si besoin. Avec mes très sincères remerciements.

As a long time user of the program, I recently ran into a few bewildering situations - discrepancies between my data on my hard drive and the online version, and needed to get help from the site. I corresponded initially with their Support Team, which was answered by Mia, who then saw the matter through to the final conclusion.
This is to simply state that the help I received was extraordinary in all ways and my problems were either resolved or in one case cleared up as to the root of the issue, which was out of the website's area of control.

You gave me 'My Heritage' in pictures so beautifully laid out! For years now I have been trying to figure out how to create a family tree of our rather "yuge" (to borrow Trump's word) and extended members of the Montenegro and Gonzalvez families. It is a real blessing that a cousin of mine living in the US told me to try and contact 'My Heritage'. Actually, I was trying to find my father's ancestors. He was born in Spain. You were able to provide me with his parents names, but not other members of his family. I did try very hard to check out all the names given but none panned out. Nevertheless, the family tree was created of the members of the 2 families that I could provide. Now I have a family tree and am thrilled to have one! Your system is really great, particularly since I am able to upload pictures of each member, as well as family group pictures and so on. And the process doing this is made so very simple!

So now, I am in the process of printing my Family Album and Family Tree. I will have a local printer print out copies of this, for distribution to my immediate family, so that generations hence, they will be able to look at our beautifully laid out Family Tree and Family Album. They will know who their ancestors are without having to go through the time-consuming research I had to go through!

Thank you so much for your expert and exquisite work! And thank you for your quick responses to my emails.

More power to you!

Cecilia Reina M Gonzalvez