52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy Week 2: Paid-For Online Genealogy Tools

Which paid genealogy tool do you appreciate the most? What special features put it at the top of your list? How can it help others with their genealogy research?

Well, at the moment I am subscribed to findmypast - purely because they were cheaper than Ancestry (of course, I used the .co.uk version).  But as I ploughed on through 2011, I found that I much preferred FindMyPast's UK-centric history.  By UK-centric, I mean that their offices are in the UK, the records they concentrate on are from the UK (no irritating interference from US states I have never even heard of, let alone have ancestors in), and even their sister sites are in the UK.  Ancestry.co.uk are very polite and helpful, and you can almost be tricked into thinking there is no such thing as Ancestry.com - until you have to contact the helpdesk and are helped by an American accent sounding at times suspiciously far away.

But the bank manager rules my life (sigh) and so, when my FindMyPast subscription expires at the end of January I will have to look elsewhere.  I will continue to use free sites such as FamilySearch - and, in fact, I think that one of the delights for me in genealogy is finding FREE resources (especially when I have numerous brickwalls.  It's nice to feel successful at something).  The only thing I find frustrating with FindMyPast is that they do not offer monthly subscriptions. 

I am seriously considering taking out a subscription to The Genealogist this year.  I recently received a trying-to-be-enticing email from FamilyRelatives, which seemed highly attractive due to its small subscription price.  Until I checked carefully through the site, and found that they did not give access to the censuses.  So I went back to The Genealogist and looked at what they had to offer.  Slightly more expensive (but not nearly as much as FindMyPast, even with the loyalty discount!), but at least they had the censuses, except for the 1911 census - so I will use my remaining time with FindMyPast to search through and download any and all 1911 images.  And they also have nonconformist records.  Nonconformists! I have plenty of them in my tree. 

Looks like this is their year, then.