Ancestry informed us a few weeks ago that they were changing their platform and that some existing tools would soon be behind a subscription paywall.
I wrote about some changes in the article, Ancestry Updates Ethnicity, Introduces New Features and Pushes Some Behind Paywall.
A few weeks later, another banner appeared saying that everything “beneath the banner” would soon require a subscription of some type, meaning either DNAPlus or a full Ancestry Subscription.
Because Shared Matches was displayed above the banner, I didn’t think that Shared Matches would be behind the paywall, but I was wrong. Trees also require a subscription for DNA testers, but Ethnicity does not.
Truthfully, I’m not surprised by the more advanced features being placed behind a subscription paywall in addition to the price of the test, although I don’t like it. However, I’m shocked that Shared Matches would be restricted. I always viewed Shared Matches as a way to engage new testers just sticking their toe in the water beyond ethnicity results.
Effective now, if you purchase or purchased (in the past) a DNA test and you don’t have a subscription with Ancestry, or your subscription expires, you will be able to view 3 shared matches and no trees. If you want to see more, you have to either purchase their DNAPlus subscription or a regular Ancestry subscription.
So, technically, not all shared matches are behind the paywall, just all except 3.
Let’s sort this out.
First, let’s talk about what this isn’t.
DNAPlus is NOT ProTools
Do not confuse DNA features requiring a minimal DNAPlus subscription with yet another recently-introduced Ancestry feature called ProTools.
ProTools costs $10 per month, is not DNA-related, and includes a Tree Checker, Charts and Reports, Advanced Filters, and Map Views. ProTools is an add-on and requires a full subscription before you can additionally subscribe to ProTools.
This article is not about ProTools.
DNA Features – What’s In and What’s Out?
I fully realize that Ancestry customers expected to continue receiving the features included with an AncestryDNA test when it was purchased, with or without an Ancestry subscription, but that’s not the case anymore.
Ancestry provides this explanatory information in their FAQ.
Don’t shoot the messenger – meaning me. I’m just here to help you sort this out, so let’s review what’s in and what’s out.
Remaining included DNA features for everyone, with or without a subscription, are:
- Ethnicity estimates
- DNA communities
- DNA matches
- Ability to message matches
- Ability to compare origins or communities with your matches
Restricted features without a subscription include:
- Shared matches, which are now limited to 3
- You can see IF a match has a family tree, its size, and if it’s public or private, but you can’t view the tree’s contents without a subscription
Features requiring a subscription include:
- Viewing more than 3 shared matches
- Viewing the contents of your matches’ trees
- Matching surnames through 7 generations
- Matching ancestor birthplaces in public trees
- Common ancestors in trees through 7 generations, which is the link to ThruLines
- ThruLines, also through 7 generations
All of the SideView™ related features are also subscription-only. You must designate a parental “side” for these features to work. I wrote about how to do that in the article Ancestry’s SideView™ – Dividing Your Ethnicity in Two. Those features are:
- Ethnicity by parent
- Matches by parent
- Communities by parent
- Traits by parent
- Chromosome painter (not to be confused with a chromosome browser, which Ancestry does not have)
What is included or excluded in Traits differs depending on when you purchased the Traits test or the upgrade, so I’m not addressing those tests here.
Ancestry DNA Memberships
Ancestry has compiled a chart showing what’s included and what features require a subscription, which they call a membership. DNAPlus includes DNA features. The family history membership includes DNAPlus features and genealogy records.
That page also includes a brief FAQ sheet.
Exception – Shared DNA Results
The exception to the required subscription scenario is if a tester has shared their DNA results with someone who has a membership. The person WITH THE MEMBERSHIP can see the full results, even though the tester cannot if they don’t have a membership.
I have a full membership, and one of my relatives, who is deceased, shared their DNA results with me before he joined our ancestors.
I always check his results because I know he hasn’t changed anything and no longer has a paid membership.
This means that if you’ve asked your cousins to test for your benefit – they do NOT need to subscribe unless they want to work directly with their own results aside from looking at the basics listed in the included features. To work with their results more broadly, YOU need to subscribe and have them share their DNA results with you.
They (or you, with appropriate permission settings) need to link their DNA test to “them,” meaning their profile, in their (or your) tree. This option, along with DNA test sharing, is found under Settings.
Please note that if the DNA results are shared and the person has a tree, they also need to share their tree with you as a separate step found under Tree Settings.
Sharing DNA Results
Here are the instructions you need to provide to your cousins to share their DNA results with you.
To share DNA results with someone, click on “Your DNA Results Summary” at the top of your page, and then click on Settings in the upper right-hand corner.
Scroll down to DNA test sharing.
Click on the right arrow.
Then click on “Invite.”
Enter their email or Ancestry username and select the role of the person you’re inviting.
Then just click on the blue Invite button. That person will receive an invitation and can accept or not. For family members who want you to fully manage their test, instruct them to select Manager. Manager and Collaborator both allow you to connect their test to “them” in a tree, including your tree.
Here’s a breakdown of what different role selections of DNA test sharing can do with or to a tester’s DNA test.
Summary
I know this change in Ancestry’s policy is disappointing for many. I certainly can’t explain or defend Ancestry’s decision. I hope other companies don’t follow suit.
The good news is twofold. If you already have a full subscription, and many genealogists do, this does not affect you directly.
If you’ve encouraged or paid for others to test, you can still view their results through your subscription, so nothing is lost to you so long as they share their DNA results and tree with you.
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Can you see or use any of the tools behind a paywall if you visit a public library or one of the family history centers or is that gone too?
This new change is very disturbing news for genealogical research as it renders the DNA test practically moot. Most researchers were using confirmed DNA matches to ancestors as verification of their work and that the trees or census records or obituaries are correct.
I don’t know. I suspect you would need to sign in to your own account to see your DNA results so that’s what would apply.
Why does this change remind me of when cable companies would move certain channels to a higher tier, requiring you to pay more to see them?
I, too, am disappointed, but not surprised. It’s the lust for the Almighty Dollar(TM) at work.
Thanks for keeping us updated on what goes on with the various companies, and for explaining things so well. It’s hard to keep up sometimes, and your articles really help us keep things straight.
Thanks. It’s hard for me to keep up too.
I appreciate your heads up, Roberta. Thank you. It seems to me that Ancestry has just shot themselves in the foot with this little gambit. MyHeritage is growing rapidly and makes things much easier for the user. I think a lot of people will tend toward choosing MyHeritage now, since Ancestry just keeps making life harder for us. (Yes, I am a subscriber to both Ancestry and MyHeritage and actually was a beta tester for Ancestry when they were building a dna data base, so I have dealt with a lot of their foolishness. ) I used to recommend Ancestry to people who asked where to get tested since you cannot transfer TO Ancestry if you test elsewhere. I am definitely going to rethink that opinion.
Do you have a price for AncestryDNAPlus?
It’s in the earlier article but I don’t know if it has changed. I clicked a few links on their page and did not find it. I’m guessing if you don’t have a subscription, it will be easy to find. Maybe someone will answer this.
Thank you for outlining this. I wonder when they are going to give us a cut-off as to how many trees we can have in our account without an additional charge ? I must have 40 trees. I know this uses up storage space, although they probably use Cloud or whatever other storage is available.
My heart goes out to some of our older folks all over the world for whom genealogy is so important to their lives on many levels, yet with prescription, food, and other increasing costs, these little extras that Ancestry is charging is overwhelming. I have read sad stories of their struggles. Ancestry should consider their timing in their decision-making and look at the big picture.
Ancestry doesn’t hive a fight. They are owned by Blackrock, who owns so many huge companies all over the world. We small people don’t count at all
Blackstone, not Blackrock.
Blackrock has problems of its own, but at least they offer lots of low-cost ETFs that greatly benefit investors! Blackstone mainly operates purely for the benefit of gazillionaire private equity ghouls.
Roberta, will we be able to see dna matches if they themselves do not have a subscription?
Yes
this was a confusing comment that others were making. that those with a sub would not see matches that did not have a sub. I am glad to finally know. I think ancestry cause a lot of unnecessary angst because they did not clearly explain. Ancestry gets bad marks for their poor communication on this.
Thank you for the clarification. I have a full membership. But I volunteer at our local genealogical society and this will help me answer patron questions.
Well, Ancestry has just cancelled me out. It makes me do angry they ate forcing people to have paid accounts to have any benefit at all from their DNA tests
If you haven’t done it already then now might be the time to upload your Ancestry DNA results to other companies including Family Tree DNA that allow you to see all your matches for free, including trees uploaded by your matches and also full shared match lists.
Absolutely!!!
I do not understand your comment. I have parent 1 and 2. I know parent 1 is maternal and parent 2 is paternal. So I wonder what I am missing by not labelling them.
“You must designate a parental “side” for these features to work.”
You have to tell ancestry which side is maternal and paternal by using either your ethnicity or your matches.
if ancestry were to offer a chromsome browser and be able to compare matches showing the segments. offer download of match name list and offer download of matching dna segments. offer all shared matches not just limit them at 20cm. offer all dna matches down to 6cm like they used to.
Then I would be willing to pay for an additional addon subscription to the subscription I already pay for.
Ethnicities and communities are visible for shared matches that do not have a sub. Does a match have control on both of those. Can they choose not to have it appear for all their matches to see. Hide it from others ?
I don’t think so. They can prevent matching altogether, but they won’t see anything either.
Ethnicities and communities are showing on matches if the account does not have a sub. Can someone that has taken a dna test hide ethnicities and communities so that others are not able to see that ?
I don’t know. I’d need to browse through the various options. I don’t think so though.
Roberta, Thank you mostly for keeping us up to date about developments in the DNA testing community. Such things as changes at Ancestry, 23&Me data breaches, Upgrades to FTDNA’s products. There is no other aggregated source for this that I know. You have no idea how often I’ve referred your blog to others over the years. Hope somehow it’s generated some satisfaction and income for you.
Can you imagine trying to explain all that to someone you are trying to convince to test? I’ve been at this a while and I think I am totally done with ancestry.
From a business prospective, Ancestry has shot themselves in the foot once again with this latest move, From a genealogical perspective, Ancestry has shot themselves in the foot once again with this latest move…
I have been one of those who baulk at subscribing to Ancestry because it is a destroyer of databases and sharing sites. It might be helpful to those without subscriptions to remember that Ancestry can be accessed at many public libraries. It is not quite so efficient as clicking on the links at home but public family trees and records are certainly accessible there. So if a match’s tree looks promising, I take notes and find the tree at the library.
Ancestry has been for me the least fruitful of the testing companies. The blackout on segment matching has been the critical obstruction. Blocking cluster software offered another. I find its messaging system only slightly more effective than throwing bottles into the sea. By contrast, I get a high level of response to messages sent by email, so it’s Gedmatch that makes it possible for me to work together with Ancestry testers. I’m not sure then that the new paywall, mean as it is, will make much of a difference to my own research. In response I did delete my own family tree. If Ancestry is going to block my access to trees, it is not going to make money off of mine.
Keep urging Ancestry testers to upload their results elsewhere!
You deleted your tree. Do you really think Ancestry did not retain a copy of it? After all, they own it………..
Actually, the last time I deleted a tree on Ancestry, I could find no trace of it on Ancestry or web searches.
I think they delete them. It would be unethical not to.
Roberta, you mention ThruLines in the title of this post as requiring a subscription, but have they ever fixed it? I recall you wrote about ThruLines having problems some time ago. I still see nothing on my ThruLines page, and I currently have a subscription (I will not be renewing it, though). I get the message “You may not be seeing suggestions from ThruLines® because there is not enough information in the linked family tree.” Well, I did not change my linked tree to remove any information, and used to have ThruLines results, so why did ThruLines stop working?
But ThruLines wasn’t usually of much use to me when it did work, unfortunately.
I would disconnect your DNA kit from your profile card. Wait a bit, then reconnect it. If that doesn’t work within about 48 hours, reach out to Ancestry support. That’s not normal.
same here. I did a 6 month sub recently just to see if there was anything new for the lines I have little information about. I have over 25,000 people in my tree. I include everyone because it helps to find the DNA matches. I also have quite a few “working it out” trees for unknowns. There isn’t much available at ancestry that I don’t have. I’m reading history books and searching web sites of really old material. Ancestry is fine until you get back to 1700. I don’t even use ancestry for my Mayflower ancestors. And I will not be paying again. For anything.
This has to be one of the worst corporate moves In the history of corporations. They are basically driving potential traffic to other sites. I would devote 1 hour daily to research and sporadically buy word explorer subscriptions. However, the value of the subscriptions has been going up and for my case no new records have been added in the last 10 years to justify a new subscription. I managed to classify many of my matches all the way down to 6 cms in groups (not all but a good representative portion). I also done enough family trees of many of my matches to see the connections. I can work with what I have for a while (years) before needing a subscription or visiting ancestry. I will download my tree gedcoms and work offline for a while. I thought 23 and me was bad restricting to 1500 matches but this takes the cake and they might not recover from this.
To be clear, they aren’t restricting matches like 23andMe did, it’s shared matches that are restricted.
Many thanks Roberta for this timely update on the changes at AncestryDNA. It is very disappointing indeed.
I have given them this feedback – In AncestryDNA I used to have access to shared matches, Thrulines and also the preview view of my matches trees. These features are now behind a paywall. That sucks. At the very least I should be able to see my shared matches/matches in common. What is the point of purchasing a DNA test kit if I cannot see my shared matches? Other DNA testing sites offer a shared matches function as standard, part of the one-off joining fee. You should keep the shared match function for users. We have paid for our kits! Don’t make us keep paying!
I encourage other users to send feedback to AncestryDNA.
Let me defend Ancestry a bit.
The DNA testing model to date has tended to be this:
Income: New test kits (from new testers or existing testers testing more relatives)
Expenditure: Lab cost + Server cost + new product design + marketing
Now this model can work if you’re getting millions of new kits a year but at a certain point you will hit saturation. Leah Larkin’s blog suggests this is starting to happen: https://thednageek.com/spring-growth-is-for-databases-too/
This means that DNA companies will have to do one or more of the following:
1) introduce new products e.g. Y testing, pet DNA, traits
2) Cut costs e.g. get rid of low level matches
3) Find new ways to charge people.
Some of the comments above say Ancestry are shooting themselves in the foot but I see it was win/win for them. Either people buy a subscription OR they stop using the service (and free up the servers). “Customers” who provide $0 revenue are no use to any corporation.
And as for people going elsewhere, I suspect that other companies will follow (look at streaming services where one introduced ads and now they all are).
Where I won’t defend Ancestry is that they could have much better comms. Offer 3 months free to sweeten the pill a bit. And also it is harsh to get people to Beta test their new features for free before putting up a paywall.
Gareth, I see your reasoning and understand businesses need to keep making a profit else close. For a start though, I am retired and on a low fixed income and live in Australia where the value of our dollar is generally half the US dollar, so whatever Ancestry charges, it often costs me twice as much. So for the DNA add on now at only US$20. per month will cost me AU$40 /m which means $480 per year. A full Ancestry sub at All Access level offered only at 6 months for AU$349.99 so for 1 year $700 or for 1 month AU$78. That is a LOT of money. I have in the past purchased 6 Ancestry DNA kits for family members to test. They are not interested and I have to do the research so to add the DNA tools for each is prohibitive. If I cannot access all the shared matches without paying extra it’s a waste of time for me. I cannot ask anyone else to fo a DNA test for me, then expect them to pay the extra costs. Yes, the extra fee is only $Au$500 pa, but family history has many other costs besides Ancestry.
I still feel they are being greedy and forcing people to pay for what they had offered as part of their free service.
At Ancestry, I don’t believe the powers who sit in a boardroom brainstorming on how to add more dollars to their coffers have a true knowledge/concept of who or what genealogists are or what they want. Somehow, in spite of the times they’ve shot themselves in the foot, they have bullied through and people continue to spend their money. The last Ancestry subscription I had was for an All-Access sub which I purchased because I was emailed a good discount. Twenty-five years a subscriber, and this was my first time for All-Access. For me, the only valuable part of it was Newspapers.com. I was so disappointed to not find something in World Explorer that I didn’t already have. For me, the value is not there for their new policies.
It has been a very long time (years) since I’ve found any new information for the first 5 generations of my tree. Discouraging. When people ask me, I tell them they’ll probably get more for their money at MyHeritage.com. My sub at Ancestry has expired. I don’t know if or when I’ll renew again. In the meantime, there are other great web sites.
Roberta, I just love your emails. Thank you for making them available. Right now, I have a budget for genealogy and DNA testing. I have stayed pretty close to it and it DOES NOT include mailings to counties for research and document processing. Just online with subscriptions, etc…Has now reached, (with current subscriptions) 920.00 per year. This is for future testing and subscriptions only! Since my renewal with ancestry, there were a lot of changes I noticed. 1. They require a third step authentication for sign in. So you posting how to share was VERY helpful. Then I noticed that the number of matches on Truelines has decreased drastically. I used to have 32 matches on one of my lines now it is only 7. So even though I still have a subscription, not seeing these other matches, now I understand what has caused this. Thank you for your continued commitment and sharing of information. Erin Rager
Thanks Roberta. Always appreciate your updates.
Thank you for keeping us informed.
This might seem strange, but I would like to thank Ancestry for pushing me to do what I should have been doing. With no advances for me at Ancestry in 2023, their latest denial of features has spurred me to focus at segment DNA, which has been rewarding, and it’s not at Ancestry.
I also need to get back to archives and work on land records, inheritance papers, and generally do a whole lot more history.
For others, it looks to me like a much grimmer, more expensive outcome.
This move is disappointing. Glad I didn’t encourage anyone to give a test as a Christmas gift.
I might as well delete the ancestry app now. I’m not paying for a sub.
You can still see your matches. Just not more than 3 shared matches.
As I have close family tested as well, my first 3 shared matches are one or both of my dons and a close cousin. Not much help if looking for Irish g grandparent’s.
First of all, I understand why those without an Ancestry subscription are upset with this change. However, I’m very confused by so many comments saying that they haven’t gotten any new information from Ancestry in years and that MyHeritage is so much better.
In my experience it is totally the opposite. I rarely get any useful matches on MH and never got any records that weren’t also on Ancestry. I recently stopped my MH subscription and now only see about 10 shared matches on each match but since they rarely if ever provide useful information for me, it’s not a big deal.
Also, I use the Leed’s method of color matching on both. On Ancestry, I rarely ever (maybe only a couple of times) find colors for 2 different family lines among the shared matches – and usually it’s because I used the wrong color on a prior match. However, on MH multiple family lines show up in the color coding on almost all shared matches. So, I just ignore the colors except if it’s a very high CM match.
I think the main reason people like one or the other is where their ethnicity is from. The longer ancestors have been in the US, I find Ancestry is better.
Also, whether you get Newspapers.com through Ancestry or as a separate subscription, I find it is one of the most valuable sources of information, at least in the US. Although, I did find information in English newspapers from the 1880’s that verified a major family lore. And that was well worth the subscription cost!
I have full subscriptions to both and find useful information in both locations. MyHeritage has a small local newspaper in northern Indiana where my Brethren ancestors are from that isn’t available anyplace else, and it has been a goldmine for me. Also, some of my highest matches from my US families are at MyHeritage. It just varies.
Agree – whenever you can find old small local newspapers you can usually find lots of info! For New York ancestors there is this free website: https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/
This is crazy. I’ve been telling pple to get Ancestry because they can see shared matches. I hope so many pple start bombarding them with calls that they change this policy back.
Claudia Lord,
I tend to agree, I subscribed to MH years ago for my German side and uploaded my DNA. Pretty much zippo. Dropped the sub at renewal time and only renewed when they offered 80% off! Also, I much prefer the way Ancestry displays Profiles and Trees.
Sounds like it’s time for a class action lawsuit.
Thank you for explaining why ancestry is screwing their customers.
I’m so disgusted with ancestry and will not use them again for any future dna testing. They have monopolized the Genealogical resesrch industry and until someone files suit, it will only get worse. It seems every research site leads back to ancestry. They have collected all our information we’ve added to our trees along with our dna tests, I’m sure they are using it to make money, then charge us for our own information by forcing us to buy a membership to access what they offered free at the time that many if us did our dna testing. This is ridiculous and I’m extremely unhappy with them.
I am not a tech. Is it possible (with help) to have my whole tree and documents uploaded to Heritage? (Ancestry should have left things the same for subscribers till the end of their subscription date. Just about $$$$).
I don’t think you can download the documents from ancestry in one fell swoop. Or upload them to MyHeritage. However, some programs sync and maybe those would help. I don’t have any experience with those.