AFHC - Computer Software for Genealogy

There are several good computer programs available to help you manage your family tree. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. Think about what is important to you, and choose the one that has those things as its strengths. Remember, just because someone else thinks a program is good doesn't mean it will suit you. If your best friend said a bicycle was the best way to get to work, would you automatically use a bicycle without considering things such as how far away your workplace is?

Many of these programs can be purchased from one or more of the companies listed on our sellers page.

Brother's Keeper

Brother's Keeper is a Windows genealogy shareware program that will help you organize your family history information and let you print a large variety of charts and reports.

Brother's Keeper is shareware - there is no charge to download BK to try it out. If you like Brother's Keeper and continue to use it, you are expected to pay for it.

BK6 works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista.

Family Tree Maker

Family Tree Maker by MyFamily.com has a reputation for being simple to use and creating attractive charts. Serious genealogy researchers were sometimes disappointed with its handling of sources, multiple names, and conflicting evidence.

Family Tree Maker 16 is no longer in production. The next version, Family Tree Maker 2008 is currently being beta tested. It is a totally new product rather than a revision of previous versions.

Family Tree Maker 2008 runs on Windows XP and Windows Vista

GRAMPS

GRAMPS is a Free Software Project for Genealogy, offering a professional genealogy program, and a wiki open to all. It is a community project, created, developed and governed by genealogists.

GRAMPS is free and open source - you can download and use it for free, and anyone with programming skills is free to make changes and enhance it.

GRAMPS runs on many distributions of Linux, FreeBSD and other Unix-like operating systems, and MacOS X. There is experimental support for Windows, but this is not yet stable and reliable.

Legacy

Legacy is a cost-effective software package for family history reseachers.

It offers suggestion and guidance for your research and a rich set of reports.

Legacy runs on Windows 98, NT, 2000, ME or XP

Reunion

Reunion by Leister Productions is the most popular family history software for the Apple Macintosh.

Reunion helps you to document, store, and display information about your family. It records names, dates, places, facts, plenty of notes, sources of information, pictures, sounds, and videos. It shows family relationships in an elegant, graphic form.

Reunion version 9 runs on Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later.

The Master Genealogist

The Master Genealogist by Wholly Genes Inc, commonly known as TMG, is a very capable family history software package.

If you have a lot of paper records, if you have outgrown more limited software, if keeping track of sources is important to you, if you hope to publish your family history in a book or a web site, then TMG is for you.

TMG runs on Windows 98, NT, 2000, ME, XP and Vista.