Geni Reviews 55

Initially was having problems with the page freezing on my Android device. The page would freeze when I would add a family member to the tree.
Support from Geni reached out to me very fast. I tried using my iPad instead of my Android phone, and I'm not encountering the same problem.
Not sure why it works with Apple but not with Android.

Hiromimarie helped me over the course of time with a complicated issue. Thank you.

There were some discrepancies in our family tree that had been added years earlier. The Geni team helped me to set it straight and make our family whole again. I appreciated the fast customer service and the smart links to family members that made it easy to link my tree.

Very poor. Full of undocumented and known spurious data with users uncritically copying information from the internet to give themselves royal ancestry or connections with famous people. I would say nothing before 1800 is reliable. I am especially angry that my uploading GEDCOM data has made me a "co-manager" of entries that have had this crap added.

I have recently discovered that anyone can make themselves managers of a profile and enter false information that I am unable to correct. This leads to wild goose chases for people that don’t exist and other false information. I have requested from Geni how to remove managers that have nothing to do with my family and to remove false data. The response I’ve gotten is a standard email to go to instructions that don’t fix the problem. This is a worthless website.

I have been informed of false info being put on someone’s tree about my family and I’m very upset!!!! We did not give permission to have our info splattered across any ancestry site!!! I have grandchildren that need protecting!!!! We Do Not want their info splattered all over the place… I would appreciate someone contacting me so we can get this info off Geni.com. Anyone can get this info and create an identity using this info…. I want my families info off immediately!!!!!!
NOTE: UPDATE!!! Geni.com responded quickly and professionally. They explained everything clearly and took care of my issue immediately. Very impressed with this site! Thank you Geni. Com!

I paid for a Geni Pro Account and have been locked out for the past 6 months. I get no response. You have somehow managed to Wipe out my correct e-mail address so that is one issue. With no phone number to contact you I feel that this is one big scam! It is now 10:43 pm I still can not get into my Geni. I believe your answers are computer generated and no one is actually looking into my problem You keep telling me you sent instructions to reset pass-word yet I get nothing! FINALLY help has arrived. I am able to log into my account.

Complete rubbish and just money making. 'Hints' to records that make no sense or match anyone. Other users 'hijacking' my tree and adding people, facts, records etc. which are of no relevance to me and my family. I wish, wholeheartedly, I had never seen it or got involved. I would delete my tree if I could find out how to do so. It is an incredibly amateur and difficult, confusing site to use. 'Help' and 'Customer Support' is non-existent. Don't bother with it!

Has no customer support to call if you lose account access. Has ability to email a support team, but only if you purchase a $100 annual membership.

Geni is an incredible company. Their website is pretty old and rusty by now and not much have changed throughout the last years. But the Geni community is what makes Geni a fierce competitor and a great genealogy site. But all features of the Geni tree are working well and probably the best on the market. Since Geni offers a Wikipedia like approach and many unique ways of displaying information.

The staff of Geni are also very supportive and will do much to satisfy their users. A symbiotic relationship is what you will find if you hop on Geni!

I had not used Geni.com for over 8-10 years so I decided to ask for it to be completely deleted including all the profiles I had set up.

Their team was super quick in helping me achieve this.

Thank you

While this review is present-dated, it represents long-term thinking.

Geni.com utilizes long-outdated technology, which makes it cumbersome. MyHeritage (Geni's parent company) has shown no interest in upgrading the Geni.com technology—especially Overviews formatting plus the add/detach aspect.

About three years ago, a MyHeritage rep once told me the company planned to roll Geni.com into MyHeritage. Nothing has changed since. I test-trialed MyHeritage and didn't like its appearance or functionality except for the processing speed, which is faster than Ancestry.com.

Bottom Line: MyHeritage needs to upgrade its Geni.com ASAP or sell it to a company that will upgrade Geni.com's technology.

If you're thinking of subscribing to being a Geni Pro member, don't expect all MP profiles to be sourced. In fact, too many have no sources included. It is a workplace site dependent on Pro members to help supply sources. That said, many MP person profiles starting ca. 1750 in British Colonial America going back to the early medieval era are quite helpful and sourced.

Geni literally promotes itself as having one family tree that connects all of humanity, but to be able to join that one family tree, I have to purchase a PRO subscription (costs $119.40 per year). Their business model is about PAYWALLING the ability the join the one family tree that it is famous for, effectively making it a CRIPPLEWARE.

Their goal is to not help people explore their ancestors in one giant family tree, but rather gather as much REVENUE and PROFIT as they can.

Geni is a CASH GRAB.

So wrong. Incorrect info.

I have been a long time member of Geni.com, which is currently owned by the private company MyHeritage.
Geni offers so-called MyHeritage DNA kits, and I bought one through MyHeritage.
However, when I tried to upload my data to Geni, I received the message that DNA kits bought on MyHeritage cannot be uploaded on Geni.
I am very disappointed, because DNA kits from other (external) companies like Family Tree DNA can be imported, but their own Myheritage DNA kits not.
Other Genealogy companies like Geneanet DO offer the option to upload DNA from MyHeritage, AncestryDNA, Living DNA, etc...

I have therefore decided to abandon my Geni & MyHeritage accounts, and to transfer all my data to Geneanet.

Originally I signed up for MyHeritage. Printing from that site wastes a lot of paper because you do not seem to be able to control the size of type or space between people, so reports can be hundreds of pages long - most of it white space but the functionality of creating a tree is good.
The functionality of Geni however is poor. It seems impossible to delete a relationship if you make a mistake. Many functions are not accessible from the menus, you have to dig around for them or search Help - the site lacks logic and seems as if it was put together in the 1980s and not changed since. It's a poor database implementation (I used to be a DBA). Never got as far as the reporting facilities. Cancelled my subscription and closed the account.
If you are on a tight budget, there's a good chance you will regret signing up for Geni.com

I started a tree on the free version of Geni years ago but ignored it. Yesterday & today I began adding data and the site is extremely sluggish. Profiles won't open, pages freeze for more than 3 minutes, words typed in appear only after significant delay and the data isn't accepted by the site after lengthy 'processing' times. I tried over two days - 5 hours or so, but Geni is flat unusable. It's a shame because I like the interface, and I absolutely LOATHE Ancestry - who once tried to sell me my own images, the creeps.
But if the 'lite' version of Geni is this bad, I def don't want to see the other side of the paywall.

Functionality is great, but this site is slooooooooooooooow.

Lots of errors due to overload, frustrating, not worth your money.

One of the BIGGEST genealogy scams on the internet. I had no idea when I uploaded my tree that Geni allows others to make changes to it; others that are actually so far out related, they really know nothing about my family. Don't upload your tree! They allow others to make changes to it, and apparently, you can never delete it.
Be aware that you can't delete your data!!!

I subscribe to 3 genealogy sites.
This is my favourite "tree" site, better than Ancestry and Myheritage. It allows merging within your tree and others. They also give you hints to similar trees. It is best to consider it a non-research site and then you will not be disappointed.