Tuesday, 25 June 2024

Ancestry ProTools subscription rolled out to UK - includes DNA Enhanced Shared Matches tool

Ancestry is now making available its new ProTools subscription, at £4.99 a month. This adds a few bells and whistles for you to help check your tree and to search your DNA results. 

By far the most useful tool is its new Enhanced Shared Matches facility for DNA results. This basically allows you to note how many centimorgans both you and a match may share with other matches, and how you and the other match may be related to any other shared matches. I've been exploring it for a couple of days now, and whilst I have not made any breakthroughs yet using it, it certainly is a worthwhile enhancement - although it is a bit of a poor show that it can only be accessed by paying for yet another subscription on top of the one I already have. There's more on the tool at https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/AncestryDNA-Shared-Matches?language=en_US.

I intend to use this upgrade for a month, without renewing, but may upgrade from time to time for short periods to carry out additional research. 

I'm not too bothered by the other offerings in the subscription, but you can read more about Ancestry's ProTools at https://support.ancestry.co.uk/s/article/Ancestry-Pro-Tools-Membership.

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.

4 comments:

  1. As an AncestryDNA test is a one off purchase, the development of advanced tools such as ESM on a huge database takes a lot of investment and effort that has to be paid for somehow. I am therefore comfortable to continue paying my £4.99/month which is the cheapest ProTools payment option in the world.

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  2. Cost of ProTools now gone up to £7.99 a month. A steep price hike in just a few days.

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    1. I tried to bring this to the attention of folks on the Ancestry UK Facebook page. A discussion started on a) the price hike and b) whether or not those who had tried it found it useful and c) someone mentioned that she had phoned ancestry and complained that by the time she got the offer, it had gone up and she got it for the £4.99.
      Result as usual - admin deleted the whole thread. Reason - complain to ancestry not in this group.

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  3. Thanks for letting me know - that's astonishing.

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