About us
Somebody has to keep it
Every family has one person who keeps things. The box of photographs in the wardrobe, the letters, the recipe on the back of an envelope. Usually nobody asked them to do it - they just noticed that if they did not, nobody would.
One Big Fab Family is for that person.
It exists because the alternatives ask for something in return. The free ones want your family in a shared world tree they can mine, or beside advertising, or attached to a DNA kit. The paid ones want a subscription for every relative who wants to look. And nearly all of them treat the living the same as the dead - which is fine for a census record from 1881 and not fine at all for your daughter.
The difference
This is what a stranger sees
Anyone who may still be alive is removed from every public page automatically. Not blurred in the browser - removed before the page is built, so it holds for search engines, for social previews and for a link somebody forwards.
Press the switch. The card on the right is the same person.
Eileen Halloran
Hidden from the public
What we will not do
Four things, and they are behaviours
Not values. Each one is something the software does or refuses to do, and you can check every one of them from your own account.
We will not show your family to strangers
Anyone who may still be alive is removed from every public page automatically - no name, no dates, no places, no photograph. You do not switch it on; you would have to work to switch it off.
We will not sell advertising, or your data
There is no advertising on this site and there never will be, and nothing about your family is sold or shared. One yearly price is the entire business model, which is the only reason we can say this and mean it. Two ordinary analytics tools show us which pages people get stuck on, and neither loads unless you accept them.
We will not hold your work hostage
One click gives you a GEDCOM of any tree and a full copy of your whole account, at any time, without asking us and without waiting. If you want to leave, everything you built leaves with you.
We will not delete anything quietly
Deleting a person puts them in a recycle bin. Deleting an account is deferred, warned about, and reversible for a long time. Every change is recorded with who made it and what it was before, and any one of them can be put back.
What happens if we stop
It is a fair question to ask a small company you are about to hand a hundred years of family history to, and the honest answer is not "we will be here forever".
The answer is that your data is never only here. The export is one click, it is a GEDCOM - the format every other genealogy program on earth reads - and we would rather you took a copy today than trusted us not to need it. You can also name a trusted contact who can take your trees over if something happens to you, which is a question a genealogy product ought to have an answer for.
The plain facts
No asterisks
- What it costs
- One yearly membership. Everything is included; there is no cheaper tier missing half of it.
- Languages
- 12, including right-to-left, across the whole site rather than just the front page.
- Payments
- Handled entirely by Stripe. Card details are entered on their systems and never reach ours - we never see or store a card number.
- Who can see a private tree
- You, anyone you give a share code to, and anyone you give a seat to. Nobody else, including search engines.
- Trackers
- No advertising trackers at all. Two analytics tools, Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity, neither of which loads unless you accept them.
Ask us the awkward one
If you have a question this page does not answer, ask it. A real person reads every message.