Ancestry.com: A good service but *not* a good value 15 May 2020 Reviewer: Specht3 from 60203
46 of 103 people found this review helpful
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Though ancestry.com does have "free trials", they can lead to ongoing charges which can be confusing and difficult to cancel. They are charging hundreds of dollars for information created by **other people**....
The estimated market value of Ancestry.com in 2017 was more than $3 billion. They have $850 million in revenue each year.
The Family-Tree branch of Ancestry (I'm not addressing the DNA branch, which I have never used and am not in a position to judge) offers two things: (1) family trees contributed by various individuals over the years and (2) public records (census records, death records, etc.).
They justify their (exorbitant) fees by saying that they have gathered more records and have better tools for accessing them than other services.
But I would suggest that there's at least one organization which offers almost as many records and comparable tools for free!! : FamilySearch (familysearch.com) . Despite being completely free, I've found their support and their tools to be excellent.
In summary, I would not recommend Ancestry.com to a friend.
