Family Tree Software

Selecting the right family tree software program for compiling your family history can be a difficult decision if you're just beginning your genealogy research.

Your choice of family tree software programs is going to be the most important decision you make before you actually start compiling and archiving your information. The right family tree software program will provide you with a host of features which will enhance your results and make gathering and sharing your family history easier.

You need to know that among the many family tree programs available today, probably only a handful will be around in a few years. This has been the history of this industry in the past, and there is no reason to believe this will change in the future. We constantly see new genealogy programs enter the market each year. While many programs may have excellent features, the companies behind them usually lack the resources to market and support their software effectively. The problem is compounded by the fact that most genealogists will remain loyal to the company they first purchased from or to their current company. The reluctance to change to a different family tree software program is also as a result of the difficulty in transferring genealogy data from one software program to the next.

Our Family Tree Software Recommendation

The purpose of this page is not to review each of the family tree software programs currently available or to compare their features. Rather, it is to give you our recommendation based on our own personal experiences and those of our customers.

The most popular genealogy program on the market today and the one we highly recommend is Family Tree Maker.  But, with that said, we also highly recommend that you purchase any version of FTM other than the current 2008 version.  Prior year's versions such as Family Tree Maker 16 which came out in 2007 and Family Tree Maker 2006 can still be purchased on Ebay and Amazon for $20 or less normally.  The chart design options for printing are far superior in these prior versions.  If you are currently using FTM 2008, we highly recommend that you transfer your data to a previous version for chart design and printing purposes.  Call us if you have any questions about this.

Other Family Tree Software Programs

The following is a list of other family tree software programs that are actively being sold today.

• Ancestral Quest
• Generations Family Tree
• Heritage Family Tree
• Legacy
• PAF
• Roots Magic
• The Master Genealogist

If you have any questions about genealogy software programs or any of our genealogy chart printing services, please call us at 630-653-8400 or e-mail us at sales@ancestryprinting.com.

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