Signing up and Starting the Search
Signing up for a Geneanet member account is painless and easy. Just input the usual details– name, gender, email coupled with a username and password–and you can enjoy your free account for as long as you like. Navigating the site may take some careful consideration, as Geneanet’s starting point shows you almost everything at once, in an almost haphazard manner. Sure, there are headings with drop-down menus on top of the page; but the rest of the space is occupied by a tiled assortment of content previews showing everything from Geneanet’s archive search, browsable collections, member statistics, and ongoing projects, to blog entries, social media accounts, and even a special feature that shows last name origins. As of this writing, there are two identical tiles promoting Geneanet’s premium subscription tier on the front page.
Checking out what Geneanet has in their archive is a great way to begin your research process, rather than using the site’s built-in record search engine. If you look through the names of their specific collections of books, newspapers, magazines and record indexes and happen to identify more than a few assemblages that may contain a wealth of information connected to your lineage, you may consider springing for a paid subscription. This is because on a free account all but the most basic search functions will be disabled, and you are granted full access only to the community forum, member family tree listings, and collaborative, participatory data collections.
7th Place6 out of 10Building Family Trees with Geneanet
Geneanet’s family tree builder is nothing special, especially without a paid subscription, though it does fully support GEDCOM file importing and exporting. This means that you can create and keep backups of your research work without any difficulties. Family trees can be of an unlimited size, but the storage capacity for your own added pictures and documents is limited to 250MB until you upgrade–at which point you’ll be given 10GB of space.
Other features that are also only available when you upgrade: checking of factual errors (for instance, if a family member’s death date is erroneously listed as before their birth), the ability to restore your family tree to a previous version, update history, and filling in missing information in your family tree using data from archive records. The most egregious of exclusions in the free account is automatic record matching, which is the basis of the hint notification feature that is standard for almost all similar services’ free tiers and trials.
Connecting and Collaborating
This is where Geneanet shines, as its free account can be considered to be almost completely powered by its member community and its submitted content; and that support is carried over even to premium subscriptions because of habits formed and connections made. The community forum is a central node where you can find general research advice, as well as help on Geneanet-specific concerns; not to mention threads to connect with members from different regions of Europe, discuss particular record types and collections, and more. If you’re from a family with European roots, you may be surprised to find concrete leads on a distant relative or two in this forum–some of whom may still be living, breathing, fellow Geneanet members.
Paying for Premium Service
While a Geneanet free account is at best a good introduction to the world of genealogy research–or an ancillary service maintained alongside more comprehensive, primary one–a paid subscription substantially elevates what you get out of the site’s archive and features. You get a slew of advanced search and family tree builder functions, as well as full access to Geneanet’s entire archive and priority customer support. Check out Geneanet’s subscription comparison page to see a full list of premium features and perks.
There is no month to month payment option for the Geneanet Premium plan. You can either prepay for one whole year at $50 or prepay for two years at $90.
What's the Verdict on Geneanet?
Geneanet Review 2020 – Conclusion
There is nothing Geneanet can do that another genealogy research service can’t do better, but two things keep it competitive: the price point of its premium plan, and its sharp locational focus. As paid tiers go, $50 annually is dirt cheap–coming out to just a little over $4 monthly–and is actually worth paying for, considering what you get for it. However, the price must be taken into consideration in conjunction with how relevant and potentially useful Geneanet’s archive can be to your research. Go ahead and give Geneanet a shot if your family is and has been mainly based in Europe for generations; you will definitely turn up more than a few leads and new facts. Otherwise, you’re better off sticking to a free account and spending your time and money somewhere else.
2 Comments
I had a geneanet free account. I had posted a number of ancestors. SOOO now the change in searching is impossible. I can not even search my own postings. No longer interested in posting a second time. I am done
terrible to get out of. It’s like the mafia. It’s set up to keep you in. You have to log in to remove service.
I get a ton of emails and am desperate to remove these newsletters and endless alerts. I’ve spent hours
trying to get out. I had to remember my password to get out but couldn’t so got a new one. No matter
how many times I tried it wouldn’t accept the password. Finally it said my email was incorrect. So it was
impossible then to even get a new password. I know they were both correct. I tried to email them but
couldn’t without the password. So now I’m stuck forever. I never started a tree here. I love familysearch.org
and even ancestry.com is honest about their offerings.