Which site is best ?

[Patti]

My Ancestry renewal will be up in the Spring, what I wondered is Findmypast better ? can I see as many Census forms there ?

[Little Nell]

This question crops up quite a lot.

Ancestry has all the censuses, the transcribed Freebmd indexes plus the complete bmd indexes, Pallot's baptism and marriage indexes, WW1 pension records, some service records etc.

I'm not sure about FMP. I've only gone on the payperview route which seems pricey. They look like they have a lot of databases but many of them are quite obscure.

[jan]

I've used both in the past, but have just got ancestry now, and although I find the new format difficult to get round at the moment I think it the better of the two

[KiteRunner]

Findmypast isn't complete for censuses yet (sorry, I can't find the bit that says what bits they have and what bits they don't have at the moment!), but at some time in the future, we don't know when, the 1911 census will be added to the FMP subscription. But when it first goes live, the 1911 census will only be pay-per-view.

Ancestry has Scottish census transcriptions which FMP doesn't.

The FreeBMD transcriptions are on ancestry, yes, but they are free to access i.e. you don't have to pay your sub to look at them.

Findmypast has passenger lists for people leaving the country and Ancestry has them for people entering the country.

[Merry Monty Montgomery]

One thing that I have always forgotten to mention when this is asked.......

I always say FMP doesn't have all the censuses yet, but the other big reason I couldn't easily change over is that I often have census searches time out on FMP, particularly if I want to search without a major box filled, such as surname - this is never an issue on Ancestry.

[GallowayLass]

The people who own the ScotlandsPeople site have joined with FindMyPast lot.

The great debate up here is will they or won't they (General Register Office Scotland) now allow images access to Scotland's censuses instead of transcriptions.

One to bear in mind for the future...

Personally I find the new ancestry homepage setup to be a real nuisance and if you have a tree up it can grind to a halt while the tree loads as it assumes you will be going to it. Also, the indexes to the censuses on both sides of the border appear to have been compiled by illiterate aliens.

Saying that though, ancestry searches don't hang up on you all the time as they do on FindMyPast.

I have tried both the passenger lists and the passport applications on FMP. I found a match on the passenger lists and used credit to see the document and it turned out to be an image from a different ship. I contacted them to say what had happened and asked for a refund of credit. A month later I got an email saying they had considered my request and as the image was perfectly legible in their opinion, they declined to refund the credit. Legibility was not the problem!! The passport search facility was hopeless when I tried. All I got was a huge list with only the first 3 letters of the surname visible - no use if you're on credits. I have heard that their census indexing is better than ancestry's but I haven't used it so I can't comment, except to say that it could actually be full of mistakes but when compared to ancestry it would actually be termed good LOL

[Christine in Herts]

I have tried both the passenger lists and the passport applications on FMP. I found a match on the passenger lists and used credit to see the document and it turned out to be an image from a different ship. I contacted them to say what had happened and asked for a refund of credit. A month later I got an email saying they had considered my request and as the image was perfectly legible in their opinion, they declined to refund the credit. Legibility was not the problem!! ...

Did you get back to them about that?

I have found FMP to be pretty good about reimbursing wasted credits if they understand what I had been complaining about.

Christine

[Cloggie]

Personally I find the new ancestry homepage setup to be a real nuisance and if you have a tree up it can grind to a halt while the tree loads as it assumes you will be going to it.

If you don't want your tree to load automatically, you can remove it from your Ancestry homepage by clicking on "Customise your homepage" and then clicking on the little rubbish bin at the top right of your family tree item.

[Gwen@coggiecorner]

I find ancestry better and agree with others the new way of searching is a pain so changed back to the old way. I have never had any problems with them regarding anything. They are adding new records all the time so I think I will stick with them.
FMP deducted the cost of some credits twice and I informed them srraight away about it but they would not refund me the money they insisted I had been credited with the right number of units I said I didnt and so they said I had used them I had not. Despite numerous emails they would not refund me so told them I would never use the site again and I have'nt and wont.
But at the end of the day the choice is yours.

[GallowayLass]

I'll try that trick about the rubbish bin Cloggie, thanks.

Gwen, the email they sent me was of the non-reply kind and I haven't been able to find the name of the image I complained about to complain again. I deleted it coz it was no use! Silly me.