None of these features are relevant to what I want to achieve in this review.

Most of the “missing” features seem to be around printing your tree, making customized wall charts, and creating a family website. But if you click on some menu items, it will prompt you to upgrade to get the functionality. Just be aware that the user interface appears to be the same.

Their website has a very long list of differences. RootsMagic Essential is the free version of the software, and it is the version I used for this review. So, should you use RootsMagic to back up your Ancestry tree? Well, I will continue to do so. The problematic elements are probably less frequently used by Ancestry users. I also encountered some software error messages, although they did not stop me from completing the tasks.

Attribution of photos copied from other trees was lost.

External web links as sources were missing.

These Ancestry elements were either not preserved or had issues:

Uploaded photos, Word documents, and PDFs.

Persons, family structure, and life events.

These Ancestry elements were preserved correctly: Before we dive into the details, here is a summary of using RootsMagic Essentials to back up your Ancestry tree. So how did RootsMagic measure up? This article is a step-by-step guide and an in-depth review. To get a true measure of the quality of the backup, I uploaded the RootsMagic tree into a new Ancestry copy and compared both trees side-by-side. I also added Ancestry’s special features: comments, TreeTags, and inline stories. I tested RootsMagic Essentials by downloading a demo Ancestry tree that included records, photos, PDFs, and Word documents.

Rootsmagic 7 download from ancestry