ScotlandsPeople Reviews 

Paid for priority service and received my order the next day....thank you!!

Really shockingly bad now. Used to be good but can't find anybody. Even ones I've found in the past which seem to have disappeared all together. Sort this out.

Supposed to be a Scottish website regarding Scottish nationality but you cant identify yourself as Scottish when signing up?

The search engine they use now is also incredibly inferior to previous versions.

When bright solid ran the website, it was really easy to navigate and find people, now can't find anyone, and I know they are there because I have found them before. Needs a huge change.

They apparently had an update yesterday.Now I can’t get into my account.The user name & password are correct.Have no access to certificates that I have paid for or remaining credits.Couldn’t get through on the phone so wondering if other person are having the same problem,

Certificate I ordered two weeks ago has not been sent, I will not be using this company again.

Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. Spend, spend, spend only to find nothing!! Why don't you visit Ancestry.com and learn how to do it! I can hardly find any of my scottish family registered with you terrible site. More positive results on Ancestry for free!!

These people are taking huge amounts from people doing family research and time and again introduce so called updates that just make the whole experience a waste of time and effort. At 50p a record, they need to get their proverbial finger out and get people in that create web based data search engines that are proven to work rather than the mess that has been created. For a population of 5 million people, with about 20 million probable past records, say 30 million records, in 2023 this should be a piece of cake even on a modern i7 based PC with 16GB of RAM - what we get.......

Been using Scotland’s People for years and can’t imagine the amount of money I’ve spent. Used to be great but over the last year or so whoever’s responsible for updating the site, has completely corrupted the search functions. For example, you now can’t use the other surname box when searching married and maiden surnames for a female death. It comes back as too many results, although a search on each surname returns limited results. If you then delete the other surname any search thereafter still includes that name resulting in you starting the whole process again.
Just one of many search issues making the process difficult and frustrating and, for a government site catering world wide, is really not on. Maybe need to invest in more experienced IT staff.

I really hate this site. Even when using filters for very common names, I'll get a 'no results' message. Then when I don't use filters, there'll be pages of names to check through... It's a rip off to pay for & then find it's the wrong person. When will Scotland's People take note & do something about its shocking webpage?

Absolutely shocking website for records and information which should be free under the "Freedom of information Act*.
it shows you a record for John Smith with no information as to whether its" your John Brown".
I've wasted lots of credits only to find out they want to fleece you of £12 for the actual Death, Marriage or Birth certificate without knowing it relates to you.
Money making machine not for the People of Scotlands interest.
Information in England much more accesable and drillable.
If I could give it zero I would.

It's fantastic if you manage to find the right person, but you could potentially use all your credits finding 9 people who aren't the right one - because you can't narrow down the search index enough.

When you've got too many repeated surnames from the same area, it's extremely hard to narrow it down. I've bought 10+ "Mary Young" records and there's another 35 to go.

I've given up, hopefully somewhere someone else manages to make another website. I'd happily pay a premium for a time limited access.

The pay per view charging model must put off a considerable number of potential customers. Genuinely disappointing compared to the likes of Ancestry, Findmpast and other commercial companies which contain vastly more information.

Don't get me wrong the documents themselves are a mine of information, particularly the statutory birth, marriage and death records.

In the past, many parts of Scotland are awash with people using the same surnames. As a result part of my family remains unresearched. Am I going to spend £££s on trying to find a Ross from Ross-shire or a MacDonald from the West Coast? Only to spend a considerable amount of money paying for the "wrong" records? I'm not.

Compared to researching ancestors from say Lancashire, the contrast could not be greater. You have numerous great resources for some counties in England, some of them free!

This is not my concern, but this might even be having an adverse affect on potential Family History Tourism in Scotland.

In the meantime, some Scottish parts of my family tree will remain a mystery.

The site has a pay-per-view model, which means you need to pay before you have any idea of what you are getting. Having a time-based subscription model, like most sites, would encourage people to use it. While other countries freely distribute public information like census records to encourage tourism, Scotland does not.

It's very expensive. For what I pay on other sites for a month's worth of unlimited resources (where I find out so much), I use up in just one hour on this site for just three or four items (after discounting the wrong ones!). The search engine is clunky so that I often end up with zero results, despite changing the parameters. There are no transcriptions of the records either so you have to struggle with the handwriting combined with some poor resolution of the scanned copies. I can't help but feel ripped off. I only use this site as a last resort after seeking guidance elsewhere, so as a result my Scottish ancestry largely remains unknown.

There is a lot of content on the site that is very useful when researching your family history. Much of it isn't available anywhere else so is really a vital resource.

Unfortunately compared to other genealogy sites it is very expensive. There is no option to subscribe to give you access to the entire collection instead you have to pay to access individual records. This coupled with a search system which doesn't provide quite enough information to give you confidence that you are going to view the right record means its a bit of a gamble.

I have spent quite a bit of money chasing down a single individual to find the right record where on other sites it would have been part of the subscription fee.

I use the site only as a very last resort and I have exhausted all other avenues of research. I would happily pay a subscription fee to get access to the collection but paying a high rate (£1.50) per record is just money gouging. Its been like this for a very long time and I don't expect it to change however I am confident they would have made more money from me over they years if I could subscribe.

The outcome is I expect most of my Scottish ancestors are going to remain a mystery to me for a very long time.

I researched and magically ordered the wrong certificate. Ranted at Keith mistakenly. Keith answered me promptly and skilfully. He then offered to send me the correct certificate free of charge. Couldnt ask for more. Brilliant service.

The website is difficult to use to find what you need. It is also a rip off, as you have to pay for credits just to look at the records, plus additional fees for original images. If you don't use the website for a while, you have to reregister. Scotland's records should be easier to access, and free, instead of this rip off pay per view website.

Absolute shower of s???e, you register then it wont allow you to log in without verifying yourself, then you click to get the email resent, it never appears, then you try again and again it then says it doesmt recognise you, no contact phone numbers and only email tech support, absolute rubbish