Friday, January 2, 2015

GenSoftReviews Announces its Users Choice Awards for 2014

I received this press release via email from Louis Kessler today:

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GenSoftReviews.com is the site users go to rate and review their genealogy software and to find out about other genealogy software to try. The site lists more than 850 programs, and users have contributed over 2,600 ratings and reviews.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The 6th annual Users Choice Awards have been announced at the GenSoftReviews website.
26 programs were eligible having a minimum of 10 reviews and at least one review in 2014. Of those, 16 programs achieved a user-assigned average score of at least 4.00 out of 5, and were awarded a 2014 GenSoftReviews Top Rated Genealogy Software award.
The Winners include:
  • 9 Windows programs: Ahnenblatt, Clooz, Family Historian, Ancestral Quest, Brother's Keeper, Family Tree Builder, Behold, RootsMagic and Genbox Family History,
  • 1 Mac program: Reunion
  • 5 Online programs: The Next Generation, Famberry, My Great Big Family, MyHeritage and Family Echo
  • 1 Handheld program: Heredis for iOS

The top program for 2014 was Ahnenblatt, a free full featured Windows program by Dirk Böttcher. Ahnenblatt ended the year with a user rating of 4.90 out of 5 based on 152 reviews. Ancestral Quest dropped from first in 2013 to seventh in 2014 but still retained an excellent score of 4.54 out of 5. The Next Generation, a program that manages and displays your family tree on your website, moved up from fourth in 2013 to second in 2014 with a score of 4.78 out of 5.

New to the list of winners for 2014 were My Heritage for their online Family Tree system, and Behold, a genealogy data viewer.

Programs that dropped off the list from 2013 include iFamily for Leopard and Heredis for Mac, both of which did not receive at least one rating in 2014, as well as Gramps that fell from a rating of 4.15 in 2013 to 3.41 in 2014.

A new rule added in 2014 is that unsupported programs no longer qualify for Users Choice Awards, but they are still listed at GenSoftReviews so they can be rated and reviewed. As a result, Personal Ancestral File was not awarded a Users Choice Award despite still being well liked with a score of 4.51 out of 5.

GenSoftReviews uses a time-weighted average score. The weight of every user rating goes down 50% every year, so newer opinions will be better reflected in the average score.

Congratulations go to all the 2014 winners. They are producing a product that their users like. GenSoftReviews hopes all genealogy software developers will use the feedback these reviews provide to improve their programs for their users.

For more information and a complete listing of current and past winners, see the Users Choice Awards page.

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About Louis Kessler

Louis Kessler has been a genealogist and a programmer for over 35 years. He developed and maintains the GenSoftReviews site. He is also the author of his own genealogy program known as Behold that can be found atwww.beholdgenealogy.com

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I guess I'm missing out on some great software.  The only software on thel ist that I use regularly is RootsMagic, and I use the MyHeritage online trees.



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