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.
Does your Spokt allow pdf file uploads? Any provision for a slideshow of pic album? Looking for myfamily alternative.
Hi Dave, Yes, you can upload PDFs (as an attachment to a News post.) We currently don’t have a slideshow feature. Give the demo hub a try!
I’ve been on my family for 10 years and need to find an alternative now it’s ending. Somethng simple enough for Grandma to use! Like the look of Spokt so far so a way of migrating stuff would be good. I think it would need to be selective though.
Can the menu categories be changed…can we rename “videos” to “files” or “historic records”?
Also, where is the cost (besides in the demo video)? If we switched over to spokt we would need more than the free amount of space.
Can we rename some of the categories – for example switch “videos” to “files” or “records”?
Also, I can only find the cost in your demo video. Do you have a page that gives info on the different pricing options?
Hi Karena,
Sorry about the confusion about the pricing! We were in the middle of a site update with new prices and the MyFamily.com shutdown announcement was made. Anyway, Our FAQ has our current pricing. It’s just $29/year for up to 30GB.
We just started working on the MyFamily.com migration tool. You’ll need to give us some time before we can answer specific questions about how it will work. Stay Tuned!
Hi LIz, thanks for the feedback. This is sudden news to us so please be patient as we evaluate how much demand there may be for spokt and myfamily.com migrations. We’ll keep you posted!
Many myfamily.com users are urgently interested in migrating their website data: are you ready to market yourself as an alternative hosting site to myfamily.com and do you have the capabilities? This is the chance of a lifetime for a young company – we are serious researchers in need of a home.
RSteiniger, we recognize this as a great opportunity and we are confident we are up to the challenges it presents. Please give us a chance and stay tuned to our blog. We were nearing the end of some site updates and major enhancements with we got word of the MyFamily.com shutdown.
Hi, I am on two myfamily.com websites and we also need an easy alternative. It would be nice to be able to export our info and then import it in a similar format on spokt. We have been paying 29.95 per year for years and we would not mind paying for something that would be similar. Thanks, David
Hi David, thanks for the info. There are differences between spokt.com and MyFamily.com but it might interest you to know that the idea for Spokt.com was inspired by MyFamily.com. We thought we could improve the user experience and we think we have. Please give us a try. I’m sure you’ll feel right at home.
I also have a few questions! Looking for a new home after myfamily.com retires.
#1: Would there be an option to view and search posts created by certain family members like on Myfamily.com? This was a valuable tool so you didn’t have to wade through every person’s posts when looking for a specific one.
#2: I’ve started a free trial and I’ve found the search option works so-so.
#3: Would there also possibly be a “recipes” portion in the future?
Thanks!
Jess
Oh, and we’d love to be able to migrate posts! We have 10 years of posts there as well.
Which brings me to question #4. How much storage space would we have here??? We have lots of family, thus lots of pictures and posts.
Hi Jess,
Thanks for your questions and your interest in Spokt.com.
#1&2: Our search feature lets users search not just by title or tags but by the full text of the the post body, title and replies. I’d be interested to hear what makes you call it “so-so” We are passionate about making great things so we’re not satisfied with “so-so” 🙂
#3: Our users simply post recipes as news. We have no plans to make a separate recipe section but if becomes sufficiently popular request we would definitely consider it!
#4: We offer sites for $29/year for 30GB. Do you know how much space you’re using on MyFamily.com?
-Dan
Yes, Dan, myfamily.com migration would be very, very huge. We are liking your site so far. The migration would really win us over.
Thanks Scott! We’re working tirelessly to make the migration tool a reality. I’m so glad you are liking spokt so far!
As a Myfamily.com retiree I’m looking for a collaborative single site where all invited family members can log into and post photos, documents, news items, etc. Does Spokt provide that capability for multiple contributors?
Thanks!
Hi Ed, that is exactly what Spokt.com does. Family members contribute to private discussions. Give us a try, I’m sure you’ll be happy here.
To answer your question, a migration tool would be awesome! We are having huge problems trying to download and save our data from myfamily – years of research at stake. Thanks for your help.
We’re working hard on the migration tool! Thanks for your input!
Would be nice if there was a way to do mass mailing from myfamily to invite members from my family to Spokt. We have about 250 members to invite.
Francis,
250 Members? Wow! We are super busy building the MyFamily.com migration tool– not to mention some other enhancements we hope to release soon. I don’t think we could add that feature this week but I’ll email you to see if I can help you by importing your list manually.
A calendar of family events with a section showing upcoming birthdays and anniversaries would be desirable. We occasionally we use the FileDrawer to post some pdf family-related files, so that would be nice but not a deal breaker – not as desirable as a calendar.
We have 800 Mb of data on the MF server. We don’t as yet have the exact format that will be used to download the MF data, but that shouldn’t be too hard to find.
Thanks. We are very interested.
Hi Don, we do not currently have a calendar but we do have plans to add one.
We’ll keep posting here to inform our users! So glad you found us!
Oh, yes. MF is shutting down on 9/5/14, so we have some time. Keep me informed about your progress.
Glad to hear that Dan! I do like site demo and privacy ( I couldn’t see my post when I had deleted my email address). Impressive so far – Let’s see how you dance with this opportunity? I have Grandkids who would love to be in this position??
MyFamily.com migration would be terrific. We have 14 years worth of threaded discussions and photos with comments. We need a way to preserve and continue. Your site looks very promising.
Bert, So Glad you found us. Thanks for voicing your vote.
-Dan
I’m also looking for an alternative to My Family 1.0 so will have a look at your demo. I’m really interested to hear if you are able to find a way to export our My Family files directly to spokt. So I will stay tuned.
Will patiently wait while you figure out the migration. The export I did from Myfamily turned out to be pics only, no names, no data associated with the pics, no convos. Would love to export everything. Keep us posted!!
Hi Brenda, we’re working on exporting everything that we can!
It is encouraging that you are at least talking to the customer via this blog. myfamily was very poor with their tech service. I am trying a small test with a small group. Is your $29 price just for the administrator as in myfamily?
Hi Dave,
Yes – Just one member of the hub is responsible to pay the annual fee. We were in the middle of a site update when this news hit last week, so please be patient as we figure everything out 🙂
-Dan
Thank you, thank you, thank you. After spending some panicky time looking for an alternative to MyFamily, I’m so happy to have found a company that is working on a way to import from that site!
Val,
We’re glad you found us! I’m sure you’ll be happy here.
-Dan
On thing comes to mind if you are taking suggestions : )
Is there a way to have fixed picture on the home page rather than just having the newest photo display? That is one thing that we enjoyed on MyFamily. We posted a special photo on our homepage and kept the same one there for years.
Sorry Val, that is something we decided to do differently. Instead of a static image we created a dynamic mini-grid of the most recent photos. Our members really like the recent photo grid.
I also want to tell you about one of our users favorite features called “Remember this?”. After a few months the home page will display a random photo from the past. This is a really fun way to revisit great moments.
I’ll check it out. Thanks.
We are trying out your site and it seems to have MOST of what we need. At present, our alumni site on MyFamily allows us to make our own categories (maybe tags would work) and to allow an attached photo to actually be viewed with the text of a text post. Is there any chance of having these options here in the very near future? This is the only way we could sort all of our data.
Are you able to use the files that MyFamily is sending us from our sites and place them here on our new sites? OR are we stuck starting all over from scratch after 13 years with MyFamily?
Otherwise I love the site. Oh yes, also, some of us were not allowed the option of viewing the terms of use, can we get those in an e-mail?
Thanks so much, I love being able to ask questions……..let’s see how fast they get answered.
Hi Janet,
I’m glad you found us. We had categories for a while but our members never really used it so we simplified and got rid of them. Our users haven’t missed them. Our search feature seems to meet our current users needs but we will consider a feature if it will help our users have a better experience.
If you post a photo you can enter as much text as you like. We do plan on changing this feature to work more like you are expecting.
We plan on creating an import tool this summer that will allow admins of myfamily.com sites to pull posts, photos, and replies into Spokt. We don’t have a ton of details because of how new the announcement is. We want to pull everything we can–Stay tuned!
-Dan
my family site
started new site here and holding to bring `100 members your way.How do i give you list of members to import
Hi edkoe,
I sent you and email with details on how to import those members.
-Dan
Oh thank you thank you, Dan. I think you are the next best thing so far by a mile and I have been doing heavy searching!
To Francis Bill: regarding mass mailings on MyFamily.com
On MyFamily.com you can MASS e-mail members, but in order for it not to be considered spam, I only send out 9 at a time. Tedious.
If you want to do the mass thing and take a chance: Hit the MEMBERS link, then MEMBERS LIST. At the bottomj right is a link to e-mail all members. Let us know how it goes.
How do I find the tags so I can categorize my posts?
Is there a way to un-invite members who others invite? I know some members will invite their friends who don’t belong on our alumni page.
Hi Janet,
We don’t have tags but Admins can remove members from a hub at any time: Click “Manage Hub” and you’ll see a “Remove” link next to the name of each member.
Janet:
I don’t see any “Members” link. Where is it (I’ve got only one member so far – me, maybe that is the problem?)
Dan:
Somehow I’ve created two Hubs by the same name (website name above). I can’t find a why to delete a hub.
Hi Don,
To invite other members there is an “Invite” link in the left navigation. Once you have multiple members you can promote any or all of them to be hub admins in the “Manage Hub” section.
To remove the extraneous hub simply leave it: Click “Edit Account” then “Preferences” then “Leave Hub”.
Also, how do administrators get declared “administrator?” Can you have multiple administrators?
Thanks for all the information. I, too have a LARGE family with years worth of MyFamily posts, pics, etc.
I would like to agree with others posting here, that a calendar feature and a recipe feature would be great additions. Very important for a family site. There is another site we are considering that already has those features, (as well as a migration tool) and I am looking forward to seeing what you have to offer in the coming month or so.
Thanks so much!
Hi Lisa,
Thanks for voicing your opinion and thanks for giving Spokt a chance. We do plan on adding a calendar feature and we will continue to consider a recipe feature. Currently our users are very happy posting Recipe’s as “News” Our search feature is powerful enough to find whatever you are looking for without the need for extra categorizations.
Busy, busy, busy times around here 🙂
I found this as an alternative to MyFamily and am test driving, I like what I see to start and have read about plans for a calendar. How about ‘albums’ for photos. Seems to me that others, like myself, have members who upload photos for all but like to keep them in an album they have titled on the site. Thoughts?
Hi Jeremy,
Yes, we plan on adding a calendar. The more people who voice their opinions about photo albums and recipes the more we are open to it. We are very careful about not overcomplicating our product. We work very hard to keep it simple. We’ve been brainstorming about how we can offer these features without adding complexity and we think we have some good and exciting ideas.
If you haven’t already you should give our demo hub a try. We do not have a scrolling announcement. You can attach random files to news posts as well as include URLs as links.
Is there thoughts on…
Scrolling announcements ?
Plain old file cabinet for random files ?
Embedding ,links within post vs. pasting a literal link in body ?
Well, this might be the solution I’ve been looking for. I’m part of a small group that took a couple of Family Tree Maker classes from or through MyFamily back in 2005/2006 and we have stayed together since then using two and now one MyFamily sites. We stayed with 1.0 version because it had Chat. Do you have anything like that planned or can you suggest how we might use a Spokt hub for our news, photos, files, etc and also have chat periodically as a group?
to LisaF – would you share the name of the other site you are looking at? Does it have a Chat feature? Email me privately if you would rather not post it here. Thanks.
djea1014 at gmail dot com
For my group, photo albums would be important (easier to keep them organized). For a group which I had planned to start on MyFamily (so much for that plan!!), both photo albums and recipes would be needed. Also, a file drawer (a place to upload documents).
Hi Dianne,
Chat: I’m sorry but we don’t have chat and we don’t have plans to add it.
File Cabinet: You can upload any type of file as an attachment to a “News” item.
Recipes: You can also post these as news and find them very quickly with our extremely powerful search feature.
Albums: We’re strongly considering this feature. We are committed to quality and simplicity so before we decide to add any feature we need to invent a way to implement it without adding complexity.
I hope you give Spokt a try! Let me know if I missed anything.
Two questions:
1.We are a choir group and use the site for news, and for music files to help with rehearsals. I have posted a file as a trial and find I can download and listen to it, but not save it on my computer. Is that correct?
2. I can’t find any information about the free trial and about costs after that. Can you help me find it?
Thanks- and good luck with all the work
Hi elke,
1. You can download it but different browsers behave differently. In Chrome (most popular browser) you can right click choose “Save Link As…”
A hub subscription costs $29/year for unlimited members and up to 30GB of storage. We are preparing a major update to Spokt when we heard the news about MyFamily.com shutting down. Our new release lowers our prices dramatically and since we are still working on the new release, we temporarily removed the payment step of our sign up process. We’ve outlined the new pricing on our FAQ and we’re sorry it isn’t more clear. We’re working round the clock to get the new release out and make things cozy again!
We’re so glad you found us and we hope you enjoy Spokt today and the imminent updates.
OK, I am looking at the demo hub… in the “News” section. I see that the first post is titles “Tuna Burgers”. Yet when I type “tuna” into the search bar just above it, I get 0 results. Is the Search feature just not active in the demo mode, or am I doing something wrong? I just need to verify that my less-computer-savvy members will be able to find things (i.e. recipes if there won’t be a recipe section)
THANKS for handling all these inquiries! I know you must be CRAZY-busy with this MyFamily thing!
Hi LisaF,
Nice Sleuthing! You discovered a bug in the demo hub. Search in normal hubs is working well but broken in the demo hub. We’ll fix it soon! Yes it’s a busy and exciting time around here!
Hi – our family is also looking for a new home after more than 15 years at myfamily. Your site has real promise, and I think some functionality improvements would really seal the deal for my family and many others.
1) The import tool is critical, but I think you know this.
2) A more formatted recipe section would be nice, where each record has more than just a title and body like a news item would be great.
3) The ability to create both categories and tags would address many of the needs people have identified for you as requirements. Please give category creation rights to the admins in order to keep them clean. Everyone should be able to tag. These should apply to news & recipes, photos, etc.
4) A strong search function is _critical._
5) A calendar is good, but I’m not sure a visual calendar is as critical to start as a list of events.
6) Personalization – the ability to select for a few color themes or to elect your front page images is important to us. I like the rotating image, but having a site profile pic or avatar, or otherwise allowing folks the ability to decorate a little lets them make the site their own, like their home.
7) Greater admin rights & controls would be nice.
8) I haven’t yet seen a way to easily batch upload photos. This would also Venice, but perhaps I haven’t found it yet.
9) Ability to back up our data would be a nice feature.
10) Our family prefers a single photo stream, using categories or tags to create flexible albums.
Things we love:
1) personal avatars
2) That you track what is unread. There are some slicker sites out there, but because they are built on a different architecture they can’t track which items haven’t been viewed, or who has viewed what.
3) Very comfortable and easy to use.
4) Your *responsiveness.*. Far and away, this is what is making the biggest impact for us, that your team is keyed in and clearly wants to make an excellent, intuitive product that gives families the organization and control they need, as well as the ability to hang on to all our content and memories.
Speaking as someone who worked in web design & app development for 15 years, I’m really looking for a robust site that doesn’t require a family to try & manipulate the product to make it do what they want and need. Mine already came up with some ingenious solutions to make their own recipe section, and multiple news sections, but it’s outside the parameters of your intent for the product. It seemed very intuitive for them, like creating new tabs easily, but it was duplicating the product over and over unnecessarily. Adding some pretty straightforward controls that allow users to set up their own personalized categories and tags shouldn’t require new objects altogether (except maybe for recipes) and _definitely_ shouldn’t require a whole extra hub just to have a link to recipes or family history or quotes categories. This is an easy thing you can do to make a big positive change in your user experience – just give folks the ability to file their stuff the way they want to that makes sense for their family. For me – perhaps more than the rest of my family, just because of my background – seeing a robust, flexible architecture that accommodates a user’s tendency to manipulate a system to suit their own needs is critical. I would like to see our family able to stay with one service provider for another 15 years or more and know that our data is logically, safely, sustainably stored and organized.
Thanks very much – sorry for the long post. ;). If you have a beta testing team for an update, the import tool or anything else, I would be willing to contribute if you’re looking for volunteer help.
Kristen,
Woah! What a fantastic body of feedback! We’re very glad you’ve found us. Thank you for taking the time to write out all these thoughts. You are very passionate about this and we respect that greatly!
We are voracious about protecting the simplicity of Spokt. The simplicity and ease of use are what make our long-time users happy. Making something powerful and simple takes longer and much more effort than checking a checkbox in a feature list. We are listening! We release features and improvements when they are ready. Right now our top priority is to deploy the updates we have and then to complete the import tool.
Thanks again for taking the time and effort to provide this feedback. We’ll let you know if we have beta testing needs.
You Rock!
We’re all trying this site with enthusiasm, and understand you are working hard on small changes. The calendar, of course, and we would like to see a Recipe section, and a History section.
I’ve read that you don’t plan to add a fixed photo, but I urge you to reconsider, at it is the comfortable icon for us, and many others, I think. We love the photos, but it seems a different issue. Website identifier on one hand, photo contents on the other.
Thanks Diane for your feedback. We have some exciting updates coming soon and then we’ll start working on some more exciting updates 🙂
Hi Dan and all at Spokt
thanks for the prompt and helpful replies. Download worked! Like everyone else we are looking forward to the import facility and I am sure other features will develop in due course.
Hang on to your hats, because it appears the myfamily.com site is self destructing rapidly. Our family has already been reporting almost complete loss of functionality there, and so I imagine you are going to be swamped by temporarily desperate families hoping to find refuge from the sinking ship. Several of my family members have presented questions to you guys, and we are all completely amazed at your calm, cool, courteous, informative and quick responses. Thanks!
Thanks Cynthia, we’re doing our best to keep up with the increase in traffic. We hope the MyFamily.com refugees can find a comfortable home here!
Well I have set up a trial hub on Spokt and so far I like what I see. I really want to thank the site owner for being open to questions and recommendations, especially from current/former My Family users. There are lots of suggestions asking for changes to Spokt (so that it more closely resembles the My Family format I think). Some of these I would like to see implemented and others I can live without. I realize this just comes down to personal opinions. However, I will say that I admire Spokt administration for trying to protect the simplicity of the site and not rushing into making changes. With regard to my own personal preferences, I would like to see an improved search engine on the site. While it worked fine when I searched for words in the title and body of the “News” section, it did not seem to work at all for words found in the title of “Photos”. Am I doing something wrong or was the search engine only meant for News? I think it is important to be able to locate a photo quickly (via search engine) rather than have to scroll through many photos. Have various albums for the Photos would be beneficial as well, but an accurate search engine is still required. I can live without having a Calendar, Recipes, Scrolling Announcement, a Fixed Photo (although I would enjoy all of these features if available), but I would like a separate category such as as Historic Records or Filing Cabinet to store informative documents in some place other than in the News section. I realize the site owner needs time to consider changes but so far I think I found the site that I will continue to use for recording out family history.
Hi Carole,
Thank you for the kind words and for voicing your opinion. This is a very exciting and busy time for us. Improvements are on the way!
-Dan
after many year at my family an import would be awesome.
A calander and an event tracker (birthday, aniversary etc) too
Hi Kathy, thanks for your feedback. We’ll do our best to take care of you 🙂
We are blessed to have SPOKT to turn to, you are answering us as fast as we can post questions. Awesome. I think we might just stay here.
Yes, we need categories, front page photo ability with html, all the things that made MyFamily the great site it was.
Thank you a million times.
So far I like it! We have about 200 users on my family. One feature we have fun with is changing the background picture to match season/holidays/etc. a simple but personal touch.
I’m glad you are liking it so far. 200 is a lot! You may hold the record 🙂
Yes, MyFamily is self-destructing; their ‘export’ feature is only exporting photos, not PDFs or Word docs (at least for my sites on 1.0). Spokt is probably going to be inundated with potential consumers. Thanks, Dan, for keeping us in the loop. I would like to put in my vote for albums and a separate folder for historical records/file cabinet. We use the News section to chat about reunions, share family news, etc. and store obituaries, military docs, etc. in File Cabinet and History. Thanks!
Hi Karen, I too was once a MyFamily.com user and it is shocking how minimal the data export is. Thanks for voicing your votes. Thanks for being patient as we figure everything out.
I have about 35 family member on our myfamily website and I have asked them to try out the demo here on Spokt. I’m sure we will have lots of suggestions at that point.
For now, I would love to have a calendar and the ability to imbed pictures in news items (so it would be more like a blog).
Can any member on the site invite more members or is that just up to the administrators?
Hi Ellen,
We are going to continue to innovate and make posting more powerful. For now try posting a photo with a bunch of text. Yes you can promote other members to be site administrators. Click “Manage Hub” from the left navigation and you’ll see links by each member’s name which will indicate if he or she is an admin.
-Dan
“Manage Hub” appears in the left navigation for the example website you have, but it does not appear there in the trial website I have some of my family trying out???? My trial site has three members – two of those appear twice in the list of members for some reason.
Hi Don, I believe I have fixed the issues you had and I’ve emailed you the details.