MyFamily Alternative

MyFamily.com announced today that they are shutting down. My family and I have a long history with MyFamily.com– we started in January of 2000. In 2007 I invited my family to try Spokt.com instead and they liked it and stayed. We have a lot of history still stored at myfamily.com and now I’m working on migrating that data to Spokt. Would this be useful to you? Let me know in the comments.

Try our demo to see how you like it!

240 thoughts on “MyFamily Alternative”

  1. Mark says:

    We are enjoying our free trial. But, we do miss several MF features.

    I wonder if it would be possible to add to Spokt the option to keep one key photo as the “big photo” (in MF it is “make this the cover photo” or something like that).

    It’s much nicer to arrive at the home screen and see that the largest photo is a significant photo, rather than something like one random vacation shot among many, enlarged only because it was the last one posted.

  2. Kathy Jo says:

    We too are in search for a MyFamily.com service that will allow import of our existing site photos, documents, discussions, etc. We actually have 3 different family sites, each of which has well over a decade of family ancestry and legacy information that we cannot afford to lose! Please count us among those desperately seeking a solution. Bless you for working to help us all out on this.

  3. Gary 1945 says:

    I am also interested in migrating MyFamily files into another site. I requested a download which was provided but the only thing that appeared in the resultant zip files was photos. I did not get any comments/text, vids, music or calendar.

    My requirements are to be able to post photos,vids, music, links, etc., and allow a string of comments to be written to these items. Comments on comments as MF allowed, would also be a plus. Depending on data capacity I think $100 – $150 per year is reasonable.

    It should be free of ads, pop-ups, etc., and closed to anyone not approved by the admin.

    That is my two cents worth.

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Thanks Gary, I think you’ll like what Spokt has to offer!

  4. Francis Bill says:

    From my family. com facebook page dated 6/17/2014

    UPDATE (4:15pm PST): The Ancestry websites are coming back online. Please clear your cache and your cookies, then try logging in.

    A couple items to note: (1) You may experience intermittent issues with Search and Trees. Please be patient, we are working to restore the website(s) fully and this will take time, (2) Images are loading slowly so we recommend you save them to your Shoebox for now, (3) If you are using Family Tree Maker, please switch to ‘manual sync’ so it does not try to sync your online tree for now. Give this a little time.

    Thank you once again for your patience and support during this DDoS attack on Ancestry.

    UPDATE (2:30pm PST): Still working on it.

    UPDATE (12:30pm PST): We were able to bring the site(s) back online, but have experienced another outage. Please bear with us as we work to restore all services.

    ———

    Ancestry.com is back online. Please know you should now be able to access all Ancestry and Find A Grave websites, though you may experience issues intermittently as we continue to work through bringing the sites back up to full capacity.

    AN UPDATE FROM OUR CTO, SCOTT SORENSEN
    Around 1:30 p.m. MT on Monday, June 16, 2014, attackers targeted Ancestry with a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS). During the attack, Ancestry websites along with the Find A Grave website were clogged with massive amounts of bogus traffic that took the sites down.

    We want to apologize for the inconvenience this has caused and also thank you for your amazing support, as this may have interrupted some of your family history research. We understand how frustrating this can be for our customers, and please know that it was just as frustrating for us too. We appreciate your patience and support as we dealt with this unfortunate incident against Ancestry.

    We have since neutralized the DDoS attack and our services have been up since 11:00 a.m. MT today. You should now be able to access all Ancestry and Find A Grave websites, though you may experience issues intermittently as we continue to work through bringing the sites back up to full capacity.

    Your data was not compromised by this attack. This attack overloaded our servers with massive amounts of traffic but did not impact or access the data within those servers. No data was impacted in any way.

    I would like to thank the Ancestry Web Operations team for working really hard throughout the night to restore the Ancestry and Find A Grave services and build the defenses necessary to mitigate future attacks of this sort. Our Web Operations team is closely monitoring the situation in case the attacks resume and we’re doing everything in our power to protect our websites from situations like this in the future.

    Thank you.

    Scott Sorensen
    Chief Technology Officer

  5. Matt K says:

    can we start an account now and import later when that feature is ready? Or should we wait until the import is ready to sign up?

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Matt, Sign up today! We’re planning on having the import tool back fill news and photos from a myfamily.com site into and existing hub.

  6. Stevej says:

    We are also refugees from MyFamily 1.0 after 15 years. The ‘We’ are ex-pupils of a boarding School in the UK, almost but not quite ‘Hogwarts’! Your Site looks great so far and we are road testing the various featurettes. Sadly, as others have said, the download from MyFamily has only provided us with Photos but no ‘News’ and Photo comments. Obviously what we really want but do understand you can’t give any commitment to, is longevity. However the signs are all good in terms of openness which I very much appreciate.

    A quick question; The ‘Account’ & ‘Preferences’ buttons no longer work for me.

    Secondly would it be an idea to have new releases as a Beta Site(with dummy data) so that people could give you feedback? I do realise this can be a mixed blessing where some are for a feature and some against but it would filter out things the majority of Users really don’t care for?

    Sorry to digress!

    Steve Jennings

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Steve, thanks for your remarks. I’ve emailed you regarding the issue you are having with the account buttons.

  7. Matt K says:

    Hi Dan,
    We signed up and love it! The avatars don’t seem to work though.

  8. Ellen says:

    I am testing out a demo hub before making a commitment and the avatars are not working for us there either.

  9. Lee Bennett says:

    I’ve set up two new hubs and we’ve posted a few items to get a “feel” for it. We hope to move a total of 4 MyFamily sites to Spokt. We’ve also exported the image files that MyFamily made available, and are working to re-name them in order to prepare them to upload to Spokt. File names and descriptions were lost! We’re not going to want to post several thousand images posted over 14 years. After we’ve identified and weeded out our exported images, is there a way to batch post selected images to Spokt, without doing it one at a time?

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Lee, I hope you’ve had a chance to see our announcement regarding the tool we’re building to transfer MyFamily data to Spokt:
      http://blog.spokt.com/general/myfamily-com-migration-tool/

  10. frank bill says:

    As of 6/21/ This is what Ancestry.com facebook has about family.com

    UPDATE (10:10pm PST): The issues with search and sync in Family Tree Maker should now be resolved. Please let us know if you encounter any issues.

    We are still working on MyCanvas, MyFamily and some of our other sites, but please know it will may be a couple of days before these services are restored. We will keep you advised as news is available.

  11. Robert Price says:

    Who moderates the content of the site? We have a website in which we often discuss political issues. Is this allowed? Of course we also have our own rules about not allowing profanities and such.

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Robert, how you run your hub is up to you. It is private and nobody at Spokt has access to your conversations to moderate or do anything else. When you create a hub you are the administrator and you can promote other hub members as administrators who can edit or delete comments from any members.

  12. Bob says:

    Hi, Dan.

    We have a 300 member 1950’s high school alumni site on myfamily.com. Since they are shutting down soon, we’re reviewing alternatives and SPOKT is one we’d like to consider.

    Can we use HTML on a SPOKT to add images, posts and other embellishments?

    Can we post music files on a SPOKT and if so, how best can we do that? Links? Song player? Background music?

    Of course a good myfamily.com migration tool would be a BIG plus.

    Thank you in advance for your response.

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Bob,
      HTML: Yes: http://spokt.com/faq#html
      You can post music files as news attachments. Today they won’t play in the browser but all the users will be able to download them. Please obey the law 😉

      Glad you found us!

  13. Patsye Johnson says:

    Can you add backgrounds to birthday and anniversary cards?

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Patsye,

      Spokt.com is a site to keep in touch with people you care about. It is a lot like MyFamily.com but not identical. We don’t have birthday or anniversary cards. Please give our demo hub a try to see Spokt in action: http://spokt.com/demo

      Thanks!

  14. frank bill says:

    Looks like Ancestry.com is going give us more time to get information
    We appreciate your patience while we work to restore the MyFamily, MyCanvas, Mundia, Y-DNA and mtDNA sites following the DDoS attack on Monday. Please note we will be extending the retirement date on each and will have more details to share once these websites are brought back online. Stay tuned.

  15. Carole says:

    Thanks for updating the Search feature – I can now successfully search through both the News and Photos sections in our family hub. Your prompt response is really appreciated.

  16. Lee Bennett says:

    I sent out several invitations to our new hub, yesterday, but no one has received them yet. How long does it take?

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Lee, would you ask the users to check their SPAM or JUNK folder?

  17. Alex says:

    Spokt looks really interesting. We are also considering mygreatbigfamily.com who have many more features than myfamily & Spokt and even includes an online family tree. Can you share the pros and con of your service over mygreatbigfamily.com and do you have plans to match some of the features mygreatbigfamily already has?

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Alex, our tool is highly focused on providing the best experience for users to keep in touch with each other privately. We are not in the geneology business but if you want to keep in touch with living relatives and friends you won’t find a better tool than Spokt.

  18. davewv says:

    Is there an EDIT feature where the originator can edit his/her post?

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Dave, Yes! Click the icon to the lower left of the posts. You’ll see an “Edit” link in there.

  19. Bob says:

    That’s a good question, Dave. I was gonna ask the same thing.

    Also, can we use HTML to create our own site front page (home page)? Can we post music on a Spokt website? IF so, by what means?

    Thanks, Dan.

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Bob, To edit a post or reply click the icon to the lower left of the posts. You’ll see an “Edit” link in there.

      Users can use HTML in their posts: http://spokt.com/faq#html

      Music can be uploaded and downloaded via a News Post attachment but today will not play in browsers.

  20. I too am a 14 year administrator of four my family websites. I am looking for a transparent migration of data from the files of myfamily.com which includes news items (which includes threads of commentary), photos which includes multiple albums), videos, file cabinet documents, historical documents,and recipes. I am impressed by the willingness of the management of this website to consider making this transparent migration possible , but am not yet convinced that it will meet my requirements. Finally, I need the new website to support html postings.I wil cntinue to monitor your development plans.

    My primary concern at this point is that rumors persist that the myfamily sites which reside on the 1.0 platform will not be able to recover all data, as the offer from Ancestry stated.

    Dave Inchausti

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Dave, I’m glad you found Spokt! It sounds like our migration tool will be a great help to you.

      FYI we do support HTML: http://spokt.com/faq#html

  21. Lee Bennett says:

    My question was how long does it usually take for the invitation to go through. If it’s normal for it to take a day or two, I won’t worry. Spam and junk folders were checked.

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Lee, I’m going to email you a request for the addresses in question so I can take a closer look.

  22. Bob says:

    Thanks for the response, Dan. Is that something you could improve on in the future. The 40’s and 50’s music files we post on our alumni site are very small low quality files from way back when, including some midi files.

  23. Gary 1945 says:

    Regarding editing, I found the edit, delete and viewers features on the lower right alongside the time passed since posting. On my hub it is a down arrow.

  24. frank bill says:

    You can only add files to a new post. Not when you reply to a old posting.

  25. Bob says:

    Frank – If I understand you correctly, that might be a problem for our site. Can you provide an example by way of clarification? Thanks.

  26. frank bill says:

    When you click on the + next to news. this comes up

    Create a Discussion Below

    Title:

    Text:

    Attachment:

    Maximum file size: 200 MB

    This lets you add file 200 MB or less. Also note this works much like attachments in email. except the file opens without downloading to your computer.

    Once the news is posted you only reply to it no other options show up.

    I beleve you can add links to your reply. So you can add as many new news posting with a the added file and link to it in what ever posting you want.

  27. Bob says:

    Thanks for the clarification, Frank.

  28. Barbara Herring says:

    I moved from MyFamily 1.0 to MyFamily 2.5/3.0 several years ago. Will the import tool be able to import from that or is it just for MF 1.0 users? I use albums to put my photos in. Are albums and arranging albums and arranging photos in albums available?

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Barbara, Yes, Both flavors of MyFamily.com’s will be supported.
      Spokt currently doesn’t have categories or albums but we plan to add that functionality.

  29. Dede says:

    we’ve had a website at myfamily.com for many years and have used 2 0f our 5 GBs…looking for an alternative. I could get rid of innocuous chat and pictures but maybe not enough to make a difference. Will there be a way to buy more space, as we are able to on myfamily? Will I have trouble exporting all that data into Spokt?

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Dede,

      2GB shouldn’t be a problem. Our standard hubs hold 15GB for just $29/year. Once you fill it up you can purchase more space. Once complete our migration tool will be able to export your data from MyFamily.com into Spokt without troubles while you go about your daily activities and even while you sleep. 🙂

  30. Janet Post says:

    Have you incorporated the option of having our html front pages come over in the download/upload? A lot of us have fancy front pages that took years to perfect. Thanks for all you are trying to do to help the orphans out here.

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Janet, I may be able to help you preserve it in some way but I do not believe it will be a part of the migration tool.

  31. Bob says:

    Thanks for asking that question, Janet. We also have an elaborate HTML front page layout which we’ve honed to perfection over the years. We’d love to keep it intact as is.

  32. Dede says:

    Thanks, Dan . I assume the migration tool will be ready before Sept 5 ? So is it safe to tell the group that we will be signing up with spokt for $29./yr?

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Dede, the automated migration tool will be done several weeks before September 5th but we are not ready to commit to a specific date at this time. C’mon in, the water at Spokt is Fine!

  33. Janet Post says:

    You say all members who want their names and posts to show up will have to be members. Will their names have to be exactly the same as they show on myfamily?

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Janet, no need to match exactly. On one of the final steps a hub admin will match the names of the users found at MyFamily.com to the hub users – we’ll also allow for the creation of members without accounts for members who have not joined Spokt for any reason.

  34. Janet Post says:

    We would find it more helpful for the older members if the drop-down containing REPLY, EDIT, etc was permanently down rather than hidden. Have you plans for that?

    Also if the red “REPLY” that we have to hover over was bigger and more noticable.

    Thanks, that’s all I have for now.

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Janet, We agree. I think we’ll have something good for you later this week.

  35. Dutch Wiest says:

    Dan – After reading that you’re offering up to 30GB for $29/yr, I went to pay for our new site, but upon pressing the PAY FOR THIS HUB button, I read it’s good for up to 15GB for the same $29/yr. Can you clarify?

  36. Bob says:

    We noticed that abrupt change too, Dutch, and wondered why the sudden change in price.

  37. Dutch Wiest says:

    I’d like to propose that the ability to invite others to join a hub be restricted to that hub’s admins. That ability could be made an option selectable by admins.

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Dutch, You are not the only user that wants to limit inviting users to admins. We are considering this feature. For the time being you’ll simply have to kick out the unwanted members.

  38. Dennis says:

    I am the administrator for the Antelopes on MyFamily, along with Steve Carlson and Earl Specht. I started the space in 1991. I recently signed up with a hub here. I tried to find the migration tool to no avail. I requested an export from MF. Should receive same in 48 hours or so. Not sure of the format. Will it be possible to import same?

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Dennis, we begun work on our automated import tool about a week ago. We will post updates here as we have more information to share. The exported files from MyFamily.com are incomplete and buggy. We will export the data directly from MyFamily.com.

  39. Janet Post says:

    Will the new update let us be able to use our own words to invite people? If they all see “Howdy!”, they may trash can the invitation right away. If we can put our site’s name and agenda on the first line, more are apt to read and join. Just a thought.

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Janet, the invitations don’t say Howdy but our post notifications do. You are not the first customer to ask about customizing invitation text. This enhancement is on our radar. We did update the invitation screen to allow admins to resend invitation links directly. Look for the “Having Trouble?” link in the “Unaccepted Invitations” section.

  40. Don Rose says:

    I have tried two times to download both of my myfamily sites to see what I would get. I was very disappointed. Both downloads had over 1700 photos The Rose Family photos were not labeled. The McCarville photos were labeled. Neither included any of the extremely valuable comments under the photos. The commentary in the various categories was priceless. I called the ancestry service center that is dealing with this fiasco. I was told that if I kept downloading the Rose Garden Photos that possibly the titles would come up. He also told me that they had no plans for making the other sections available for downloading – History, News, Recipe, File Cabinet, etc. I let him/them know in no uncertain terms how upset I am that they had not prepared properly for dumping this site.

    My intentions, if I have the time, is to completely dismantle both sites, by cutting and pasting everything in some sort of order, and sharing the results with interested family members.

    I am very interested in you migration tool and how it would work. Are you coordinating with ancestry? There will likely be bugs and problems to work through, so the sooner that we can start using it, the sooner that it will be perfected (hopefully well before the dreaded September 5 date). Thank you for trying to accommodate all of us myfamily refugees. I for one will never again spend a penny on anything ancestry.

    1. RJ says:

      Hi Don,

      Thank you for your questions. I am not at liberty to discuss the nature of our relationship with MyFamily or Ancestry.

      Regarding your other questions: yes, our Mayflower migration tool is ready and successfully exporting MyFamily sites for thousands of users, even as I type this. Please visit http://spokt.com/mayflower/myfamily-migration-export-tool and click on the button that says “Save Your Family Data Now»”. Please feel free to contact our support team with any questions or if you need any help with the migration: http://spokt.com/contact

      Thanks, and welcome aboard!
      RJ

  41. mary says:

    After giving my credit card information to sign up I selected the Mayflower migration tool only to find out the it costs an additional $69.00. Now I am trying to cancel but there is not way to contact them except for a form on their site with the cute disclaim that they “usually reply within a day, maybe two”. Not happy, not at all.

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Mary, we’re human and reply as quickly as we can. Thank you for using our contact form to request your cancellation. It is not ideal but that is our current method to cancel your membership: http://spokt.com/faq#cancel-membership

      We haven’t made many refunds but when a customer asks for it we take care of it right away!

  42. Dede says:

    I’m sorry if this was answered before but do the names, emails addresses, etc of all our members get exported also.?

    1. RJ says:

      Hi Dede,

      We are working on including these as well. They have not been officially announced as supported data, but it seems plausible that they will, after all, be included.

  43. Kayle Simon says:

    Two questions. MyFamily.com had our photos in albums or groups; with a large family site, this was extremely useful. I wondered whether several hubs for each family group might give us similar organizational abilities, but we still want a “main” site where everyone can see everything, is that even possible? I mean, I can see the hubs I’ve created, but don’t want my users to have to log in to several hubs just to organize stories and photos.

    Second, is there any email that can go out when items are added to the hub, or newsletters that go out on a weekly basis, if we like? We use our myfamily site for history gathering, so it can be weeks when nothing is added, but when something is, people want to know about it.

    thank you.

    1. RJ says:

      Hi Kayle,

      We are working on some substantive improvements to overall site organization, with a specific focus on Photos (and other files). We don’t have any official announcements just yet, but we’re working hard to have these ready soon. As an aside, all your albums and relationships from MyFamily are being saved and will be present in one form or another on Spokt once we import them into your Hub.

      As for digests or email notifications, we do have this feature, and it works quite well. Users can change their notification settings by going to their Edit Account / Preferences screen. I hope this helps!

      RJ

    2. Kayle Simon says:

      Thank you RJ. That is a huge help to us.

  44. Kayle Simon says:

    Related to Dede’s question about emails: myfamily.com allowed new members to sign up without making contact info, including their emails, visible the other members, including the administrator. In our case, out of 70 members, we do not have about 60 of their emails, and they are all over the world. We may be in the minority in this regard; most people probably have everyone’s email that they need so if it doesn’t come over, they can do the invites and not lose anyone.

    But in our case, as an assurance, we are sending notices out from MyFamily asking them to send us the emails of all who haven’t made that info visible. We are starting to do this now because frankly given how poorly MyFamily.com has worked for the last year, we are not sure our notices to members will be received in the last few weeks!

  45. Bob says:

    When will tutorials be made available for Spokt.com hub owners? So far, we find ourselves looking at our black & white hub website with no embellishments whatsoever except for a few photos we’ve uploaded there. Our myfamily main site and our test site at Family Lobby are resplendent with color, backgrounds, themes. banners and HTML use. (1)When will we be able to enhance our hubs in that way and (2) when will some sort of tutorials be made available to hub owners? We need to get off of dead center with our hub and really take it for a joy ride. It needs to be much more than a place to leave comments and look at photos/videos.

    Thanks for your feedback.

    Bob

  46. I noticed that your website doesn’t have one of the best features of myfamily.com, i.e., the button that shows which family members have “visited” and viewed your message or photo. This is very interesting info for anyone who posts something on the website. Do you have any plans for incorporating this feature into Spokt?

    Thanks,

    Jon Zimmer

    1. Dan says:

      Hi John, you can see the viewers of a post. Click the spectacles.

  47. Cynthia says:

    Was browsing some old family posts today and was reminded of the turmoil we all went through back in June when myfamily announced their closure. Let me just say that back then, my mom, sisters, my daughters and I all had questions for you, just as a million others did (who, like us, were afraid of losing something very important.). You all stepped up to the plate then, by answering questions quickly and caring about each individual and their concerns at a time when I’m sure you very well could have been overwhelmed at the increase in site traffic and demand. Since then you all have continued to be great, the migration tool (!!!!) the updates, the upcoming features….wonderful.

    I just wanted to say that we’ve settled in comfortably, our bags are unpacked, the coffee pots always on, we feel like we are home. Congratulations to you all, and thanks!

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