"Genealogy software" sounds like one category, but it's really three jobs wearing the same name. Some programs are built to store and organize your research, some are built to search historical records, and some are built to display the result as a chart. Knowing which job you need stops you from paying for the wrong tool — or expecting a record service to produce a frame-worthy poster.
The three kinds of genealogy software
1. Desktop research programs. Tools like Gramps (free and open-source), RootsMagic and Family Tree Maker live on your computer and are built to hold a large, sourced tree — thousands of people, citations, notes and media. They're the filing cabinet of genealogy: powerful, private, and yours. Their printed charts are functional but rarely the kind you'd hang on a wall.
2. Online record services. Ancestry, MyHeritage and FamilySearch combine an online tree with vast collections of historical records — censuses, birth and death indexes, immigration lists. Their strength is discovery: hints that surface ancestors you didn't know about. Most charge a subscription for record access, though FamilySearch is free.
3. Chart makers. This is the display layer. A chart maker takes a tree you already have and turns it into a polished fan chart or pedigree chart — themed, sized for a poster, and built to print. Kindred is this kind of tool: it doesn't search records or replace your research program, it makes the finished artifact.
GEDCOM: the thread that ties them together
The reason you can mix and match is a single shared file format: GEDCOM. Almost every
genealogy program can export your tree as a .ged file and import one back. That portability
is the whole game — it means your data isn't trapped in any one tool.
A typical workflow looks like this:
- Discover ancestors in a record service (Ancestry, MyHeritage, FamilySearch).
- Organize and source them in a desktop program (Gramps, RootsMagic) — or skip this if your tree is small.
- Export a GEDCOM and import it into a chart maker to produce the poster.
Because each step speaks GEDCOM, you never retype your family.
Free vs. paid — what you actually pay for
Free and paid aren't a quality line so much as a what's-included line:
- Free: Gramps (desktop), FamilySearch (online tree + records), and building/previewing a chart in Kindred all cost nothing.
- Paid: record-service subscriptions buy access to historical collections; Kindred's one-time $29 buys a print-quality, watermark-free export with premium themes and large poster sizes — not a subscription.
You're rarely paying for the software itself; you're paying for records, hosting, or a finished print.
Where Kindred fits
Kindred is deliberately narrow: it's the chart layer. Bring a tree from anywhere — type it in directly or import a GEDCOM from Ancestry, MyHeritage, FamilySearch, Gramps or RootsMagic — and Kindred renders two documents from the same data:
- a radial fan chart, the space-efficient layout that fits five or six generations on one page and frames beautifully, and
- a classic pedigree chart, the formal left-to-right ancestor document.
Building and previewing are free with no account, your data stays private in your browser, and the one-time $29 export unlock is the only cost — there when you're ready to print.
So which should you use?
If you're building a big, sourced tree, start with a desktop program or a records service. If you're hunting for unknown ancestors, a records service is the right engine. And when you've gathered what you know and want a chart worth framing, that's the moment to bring your GEDCOM into Kindred. The tools aren't rivals — they're stages in the same project.
Bring your tree over and see it as a finished chart.