Tuesday, January 5, 2016

GenSoftReviews Announces its Users Choice Awards for 2015

I received this press release from Louis Kessler earlier this week:

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GenSoftReviews Announces its Users Choice Awards for 2015

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 930 programs, and users have contributed over 3,500 ratings and reviews.





FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 1, 2016

The 7th annual Users Choice Awards have been announced at the GenSoftReviews website based on more than 900 reviews submitted by users during 2015.

33 programs were eligible having a minimum of 10 reviews, at least one review in 2015 and still being sold and supported by the vendor. Of those, 17 programs achieved a user-assigned average score of at least 4.00 out of 5, and were awarded a 2015 GenSoftReviews Top Rated Genealogy Software award.

The Winners include:

  • 8 Windows programs: Evidentia, Ahnenblatt, Family Historian, Clooz, Ancestral Quest, Brother's Keeper, RootsMagic, and Family Tree Builder
  • 2 Mac programs: Heredis for Mac, and Reunion
  • 2 programs built for Windows, Mac and Unix:  Evidentia and Familienbande
  • 4 Online programs: Famberry, Genealogie Online, The Next Generation and MyHeritage
  • 1 Handheld program: Heredis for iOS

New to the list of winners for 2015 were Evidentia, Familienbande, Genealogie Online and webtrees.

The top program for 2015 was Evidentia, a source-centric genealogy tool by Ed Thompson, which ended the year with a weighted user rating of 4.96 out of 5 based on 10 reviews. Second was Famberry, an online family tree building social network with 4.91 out of 5. All 8 of Evidentia’s ratings and all 17 of Famberry’s user ratings in 2015 were the maximum 5-stars.

Ahnenblatt dropped from first in 2014 to fifth in 2015 but still retained an excellent score of 4.85 out of 5.

Programs that dropped off the list from 2014 include Genbox Family History, Family Echo, My Great Big Family and Behold.

Five programs have won a Users Choice Award all 7 years since the award was established in 2009. They are The Next Generation, Brother’s Keeper, RootsMagic, Family Tree Builder, and Reunion.

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 2015 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 GensoftReviews Users Choice Awards page.

UPDATE:

GenSoftReviews has taken the advice of genealogical technologist Tamura Jones who has suggested that unsupported software be eligible for the Users Choice Awards.

These are, after all, user choices of the software they use, and it is irrelevant of the fact that the software may not be supported or even available. It is only fair that all programs still in use be rated equally against each other.


As a result, there are 6 more programs eligible for the awards and 3 additional award winners, namely Personal Ancestral File (PAF) with a 4.77 out of 5 rating, Ultimate Family Tree (UFT) with a 4.20 out of 5 rating, and Family Tree Maker – up to Version 16 with a 4.11 out of 5 rating.

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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 at www.beholdgenealogy.com

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Copyright (c) 2016, Randall J. Seaver

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