Ancestry to Retire Family Tree Maker Software

The following is from Ancestry. I'm sorry to be so late posting this. Since this announcement came out I have been swamped at RootsMagic helping people switch to new software.  I will be posting all the companies press releases offering options to FTM users to help in making new decisions.



Dear Family Tree Maker™ community,

Ancestry is proud to have made a significant investment this year to bring valuable new content and records to the Ancestry site. In 2015, we’ve made 220 million searchable historical records from Mexico available, more than 170 million pages from the largest collection of U.S. will and probate records, among others. We’ve also introduced new features such as Ancestry Academy, and major advancements for AncestryDNA.

As we strive to provide our customers with the best experience possible, we are constantly evaluating our services and product offerings. True to this focus, we’ve taken a hard look at the declining desktop software market and the impact this has on being able to continue to provide new content, product enhancements and support that our users need. With that, we’ve made the tough decision to stop selling Family Tree Maker as of December 31, 2015.

We will continue to support existing Family Tree Maker owners at least through January 1, 2017. During this time, all features of the software, including TreeSync™ will continue to work. Our Member Services team will also remain available to assist with questions or issues you may have.

These changes are never easy. But by focusing our efforts, we can concentrate on continuing to build great products for our loyal Ancestry community. 

You can find additional details about the retirement of Family Tree Maker on our blog.

-------Updates------

After 6,660 comments (8,830 today) were made by concerned Family Tree Makers users on Ancestry's announcement, there was a follow-up blog posting on December 9, 2015  "More Information on Family Tree Maker Desktop Software" that addressed concerns. The question below was the most frequently asked.

Will third party providers be able to integrate with Ancestry family trees?
We are exploring possible relationships with other desktop software solutions that would make it possible for their producst to integrate with Ancestry API. Stay tuned.

As of today there are 1,144 comments on that recent blog post.