M Kupietz - I'm done here

There are also lots of broken trees at Ancestry, some of which have made there way to Geni. There is nothing like research no matter what platform you go with.

Last time I checked you could not find out relationships easily by doing searches at Ancestry, although it has been a long time since I left that platform.

Here is how you and I are related by marriage....

"M Kupietz is your aunt's ex-husband's second great aunt's husband's first cousin's husband's daughter's husband's great niece's husband's second cousin's wife's second cousin."

Overall I like Geni because there could be dozens of relatives/relations working on your tree with/for you.

Sorry, I didn't realize this post was public, I was just trying to attach a note to my profile for the handful of people I've been directly in touch with on here.

FWIW, Ancestry gives a LOT more useful and relevant information than Geni does, after 48 hours there my family tree, of just blood relatives, is now three times the size it was after years searching on Geni, and goes back almost 200 years further. I found huge branches of my family tree that I had heard existed but could never find a trace of on here.

However, other than having more information to dig up, Ancestry very quickly proved to be pretty much a rip-off, too. It's basically just another social media platform with a genealogy slant, an underpowered family tree viewer, and some admittedly very big information archives. And after you're done scanning those archives and gotten what you need from them, you're paying for, uh, I'm not sure what, after that.

And, like Geni, as far as actual genealogy record management, they charge much more than most family tree software costs, but offer far fewer features. I thought Ancestry would have decent tree management features but they're abysmal, much worse than Geni's. I can't believe how bad it is. I thought it was a site for serious genealogy but it's not. Plus their support is truly abysmal, the less said the better but boy did I waste a lot of time with them tonight before I finally decided to cancel my subscription.

If I sound frustrated, yep.

So, since my Geni tree is now useless unless I give them $100, and I've already about exhausted what Ancestry has to offer, I guess going forward I'll be managing my family tree manually on my computer. None of these services has shown me anything worth paying for access to.

Private User

There is no need to choose between paying or doing nothing on Geni.
As I mentioned elsewhere
I believe the two major disadvantages to not having Pro are
1) if you want to go to a Public Profile not in your Max Family and not managed by you or someone in your Max Family, then you need to search on Google or some other search engine - you cannot get there using Geni's search
2) You cannot make use of Geni's Suggested Matches, which they call Tree Matches - lots of ways you can merge https://help.geni.com/hc/en-us/articles/229705547-How-do-I-merge-du... but not using Tree Matches

And a Curator elaborated https://www.geni.com/discussions/245980?msg=1572872
"If you collaborate with other users you can find profiles they manage with Geni search and you can merge profiles they manage with profiles you manage without having to wait for them approving the merge.

You do not really need Pro, but having Pro makes working easier and it takes a lot less time."

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Geni is not a place with a Data Base of records. Ancestry is - and AncestryLibrary provides free access to almost all of them at any Library that subscribes to it. Does your local town/city Library have a subscription to it?
FamilySearch also has a good Data Basd of Records, and it is free.
Geni is a place to create your family tree and upload records found elsewhere to document what you have found.

That you were expecting to use Geni as a resource is a strong testament to how much has been done here.