Although this website’s main focus is not on the UK, it still has plenty to offer British genealogists, especially those with overseas family
myheritage.com/pricing
PRICE Premium £59 for the first year, then £89/year; PremiumPlus £109 for the first year, then £169/year; Data £79 for the first year, then £129/year; Complete £139 for the first year, then £229/year; Omni pricing TBA
EASE OF USE 7.2/10
Most of our panel were impressed with MyHeritage’s layout and navigation – Dave commended its ‘Categories’ side panel, which is always on view, while Lisa felt that it was “very easy to use”, with “clear options along the top of the screen [and] loads of help available”. The only dissenting voice came from Kay, who found the website “confusing and a bit irritating”, criticising the site’s focus on family trees rather than research, which “almost seems to be an afterthought”.
POWER OF SEARCH 7.2/10
Our readers were less impressed with the website’s search tools. One note of praise came from Lisa who found searching and obtaining the correct records “very easy, providing you check the authenticity of the records first”. Dave noted the emphasis on placing family trees before records and bemoaned a lack of options for filtering results by country only, while Kay found that the whole experience was “a bit underwhelming”.
FAMILY TREE-BUILDING AND HINTS 7.1/10
Lisa and Steve drew particular attention to the site’s AI capabilities: “Easy to generate and contains a detailed bio of the person selected,” according to Lisa. Others were less keen – Dave was quite impressed with certain parts of the tree but bemoaned the lack of sources or hints on the tree display. Kay found tree-building difficult and counter-intuitive in places: “I could add records but then not see where they were attached to the individual.”
CORE UK RECORDS 5.8/10
MyHeritage ticked most boxes for core record sets. Dave was particularly impressed with the census search results – these “have the best presentation with family members clearly shown which makes life easier”. However, Steve struggled with searches: “The records didn’t always match up with the tree, a lot of the time because of a same forename.” Julie noted a scarcity of Scottish and Irish records, while both Dave and Kay highlighted the lack of images for General Register Office indexes, parish registers and the 1939 Register.
SPECIALIST UK COLLECTIONS 4.8/10
