Are the subscription sites worth the money?

[CuppaTeaJanice]

My dad is retiring in a couple of months. He's expressed an interest in restarting his research of our family tree (which he last did in the early 1990s, before the internet was of any use for this kind of thing). I thought about maybe buying him a subscription to findmypast or ancestry etc as his retirement/65th birthday present.

Are they worth the money? They are quite expensive and I don't want to a. burden him with a subscription that he'll have to keep paying once my gift has finished and b. pay for information that can be found free or much cheaper elsewhere.

Would I be better off getting him some up-to-date software to record his findings, and some money for one-off downloads of certificates he needs etc.? He used to use a programme called Brothers Keeper - I don't know if that still exists.

Any advice?

The Family Tree Maker software is very easy to install and use and comes with a three month subscription to ancestry. I use it myself and bought it for my dad for Christmas - think it was about £30 on amazon.

You can buy pay per view credits for both ancestry and find my past. I prefer to use ancestry as it has the west Yorkshire parish records which is very useful for my research and I dip into find my past when I need to, for example for emigration records.

Thanks NannyR, that sounds good. Do you know if I can buy him ancestry pay per view credits before he has set up an account? And once he's had his 3 month subscription, can he then pay as he goes, or does he have to pay monthly?

Just looked on Amazon - the platinum version has 6 months free on ancestry!

You can also have a free two week trial on both sites to see which you prefer.

On ancestry you can pay monthly, three monthly or annually or use ppv credits.

This months Who do you think you are? Magazine has a feature comparing all the sites with costs, pros and cons and they have some discount codes - ancestry has 20% off, find my past has 10%. Can let you have them if you are interested.