Logo: © The Software MacKiev Company. Used for editorial purposes. Source: mackiev.com/ftm.
Few products have shaped the landscape of consumer genealogy as profoundly as Family Tree Maker (FTM). First released in 1989 — when personal computers were still a novelty in most homes — it introduced millions of people to the idea that their family history could be organized, stored, and shared on a desktop machine. More than three decades later, the software is still actively developed and used by a dedicated community of researchers worldwide. Understanding its history, its turbulent journey through multiple corporate owners, its near-death experience in 2015, and its current capabilities gives valuable context to anyone considering it as part of their genealogy toolkit.
Origins: Banner Blue Software and the Birth of Consumer Genealogy Software
Kenneth Lafferty Hess founded Banner Blue Software in 1984 in Fremont, California.[1] A software entrepreneur with a vision for bringing practical tools to home computer users, Hess developed the first version of Family Tree Maker and released it in 1989, initially for MS-DOS on 3.5-inch and 5.25-inch floppy disks. The concept was straightforward and genuinely new for the time: give ordinary people a tool to record their family trees on a computer, generate charts and reports, and organize the documentation that genealogical research produces.
The timing was right. The home computer market was growing rapidly, and the 1980s had seen a surge of popular interest in family history — partly driven by the cultural impact of Alex Haley’s Roots and the subsequent television adaptation. Family Tree Maker filled a gap that no major software publisher had yet addressed, and it found an audience. By the time Hess sold Banner Blue to Broderbund Software in 1995, the company had sold approximately two million copies of the software and generated roughly $78 million in revenue.[2] For a bootstrapped software company built around a single product, it was a remarkable achievement — and it established Family Tree Maker as the category-defining product in consumer genealogy software.
The Broderbund Era and the Ownership Carousel (1995–2003)
Broderbund, best known for publishing educational and entertainment software titles like Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? and Print Shop, acquired Banner Blue in May 1995. Under Broderbund, Family Tree Maker expanded its feature set and continued to grow its user base. Versions 3 and 4 were published under the Broderbund name, and the software added a Windows version alongside the existing DOS release — a critical transition as Windows rapidly displaced DOS as the dominant operating environment for home computers.
What followed was a period of corporate instability that left the software — and its users — at the mercy of successive acquisitions and corporate restructurings. In August 1998, The Learning Company acquired Broderbund, bringing Family Tree Maker under new ownership. The Learning Company was itself acquired by Mattel Incorporated in May 1999, in what would become one of the most notorious failed corporate acquisitions in technology history. Mattel, struggling with the disastrous integration, eventually gave The Learning Company away — effectively for nothing — in late 2000. Through all of this, Family Tree Maker continued to be published under various versions, its development team doing their best to maintain continuity despite the corporate turbulence around them.
In 2001, a new company called Genealogy.com (later MyFamily.com) acquired the rights, and in 2003 Ancestry.com — at that point becoming the dominant force in online genealogy — acquired the software. It was under Ancestry that Family Tree Maker would reach its greatest commercial heights and, ultimately, its closest brush with extinction.
The Ancestry Years: Integration, Growth, and a Shocking Announcement (2003–2016)
Ancestry’s ownership of Family Tree Maker made strategic sense. Combining the world’s largest online genealogy database with the leading desktop genealogy application created a powerful ecosystem: users could research records on Ancestry’s website, then sync their findings directly into their desktop tree through Family Tree Maker’s TreeSync feature. The application programming interface (API) that powered this synchronization was a significant competitive advantage and a major reason researchers chose Family Tree Maker over competitors.
Under Ancestry, the software went through annual version releases (Family Tree Maker 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014) and was available for both Windows and Mac. A Mac version had existed briefly in 1997 before being discontinued for over a decade; its reintroduction under Ancestry — developed in partnership with a Ukrainian software company called Software MacKiev — expanded the platform’s reach significantly. The software reached its commercial peak during this period, with millions of registered users and strong brand recognition within the genealogy community.
Then, in November 2015[3], Ancestry dropped a bombshell: it was discontinuing Family Tree Maker entirely. The announcement cited the declining market for desktop software and Ancestry’s strategic decision to focus on its core web-based business. Ancestry committed to supporting existing customers through at least January 1, 2017 — a one-year runway — but the message was clear: Family Tree Maker was being retired.
The genealogy community reacted with dismay. Family Tree Maker had a loyal user base that had invested years — in some cases decades — building trees in its format, and many researchers had come to depend on the TreeSync integration as a central part of their workflow. The announcement triggered urgent questions about data preservation, alternative software, and what would become of millions of family trees stored in the FTM file format.
Rescue and Rebirth: Software MacKiev Takes Over (2016–Present)
The story did not end there. In February 2016, Ancestry announced that it had reached an agreement with Software MacKiev[4] — the company that had developed the Mac version of Family Tree Maker under contract — to sell the rights to the software. Software MacKiev, founded by Bill Keenan and headquartered in Kyiv, Ukraine, would take over development, sales, and support for Family Tree Maker on both Mac and Windows.
It was an extraordinary reversal, and Software MacKiev delivered on it. Within months, the company had released Family Tree Maker 2017 — a substantial update that replaced Ancestry’s deprecated TreeSync API with a new synchronization system called FamilySync, and added FamilySearch integration, Color Coding tools, and the Photo Darkroom image restoration feature. The message to the genealogy community was unambiguous: Family Tree Maker was not dying, it was being reborn under developers who understood and cared about genealogy software.
Family Tree Maker 2019 followed, released in September 2019 to coincide with the software’s 30th anniversary. It brought historical maps, enhanced performance, improved color labeling, and further refinements to the Ancestry and FamilySearch integrations. And in May 2025, Software MacKiev released Family Tree Maker 2024 — the most significant update in years, carrying the product into a new generation of genealogy research.
🌳 Family Tree Maker’s Historical Significance
It is difficult to overstate Family Tree Maker’s influence on how ordinary people engage with family history. When it was first released in 1989, genealogy was a pursuit that required physical visits to courthouses, libraries, and archives — a pursuit largely limited to those with the time, resources, and determination to do the work in person. The idea that a home computer program could help an average person organize their family tree, generate professional-looking charts, and share their research was genuinely transformative.
Family Tree Maker was not the only early genealogy program — Personal Ancestral File (PAF), developed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, predated it — but it was the product that brought genealogy software into mainstream consumer consciousness. The two million copies sold by Banner Blue alone, before the Broderbund acquisition, represent a significant fraction of all home computer users at the time. The software seeded interest in genealogy in households that might never have considered it otherwise, and many of today’s most dedicated genealogical researchers trace their initial engagement with the hobby to an early version of Family Tree Maker.
The software’s integration with Ancestry.com during the 2000s and early 2010s also helped establish the model of linked desktop-and-online genealogy research that is now standard across the industry. The expectation that a desktop application should connect to online databases, sync trees bidirectionally, and deliver hints from record collections — all features that RootsMagic, Legacy, and other programs now offer — was pioneered at scale by Family Tree Maker’s TreeSync system.
Family Tree Maker 2024: Current Capabilities
Family Tree Maker 2024, released in May 2025 and currently at version 25.0.2[5], is available for both Windows (7 or later) and Mac (OS 10.10 or later). It is a paid application priced at $79.95 for new users, with upgrade pricing available for existing customers. It is not a subscription — the software is a one-time purchase, though some connected services carry additional optional costs.
Ancestry Integration via FamilySync: The Ancestry synchronization that made Family Tree Maker famous remains its most distinctive feature. FamilySync allows bidirectional synchronization between your local FTM tree and your Ancestry.com online tree, delivering Ancestry record hints directly into the desktop application and keeping both copies current. Multiple computers can sync to the same Ancestry tree simultaneously — useful for researchers who work across a desktop and a laptop. An Ancestry.com subscription is required to access full record collections, but the synchronization itself works with a free Ancestry account for basic tree management.
FamilySearch Integration: FTM 2024 provides direct access to FamilySearch’s database of over six billion historical records, delivering match suggestions and allowing records to be merged into your local tree. You can also download entire branches from a FamilySearch tree directly into Family Tree Maker, which is particularly useful for researchers who work with FamilySearch’s collaborative global tree alongside their private local database.
Turn Back Time 5000: Perhaps the most practically useful new feature in FTM 2024 is an undo system that supports up to 5,000 reversible actions. Named with characteristic Software MacKiev flair, this means researchers can experiment freely — merging records, reorganizing data, making bulk changes — with the confidence that any mistake can be reversed, even thousands of steps later. No other major genealogy application offers undo depth comparable to this.
TreeVault Cloud Services: TreeVault is Software MacKiev’s cloud backup and connectivity platform, available as an optional subscription at $1.99 per month (with a three-month free trial). TreeVault provides real-time automatic cloud backup of your FTM tree, an Emergency Tree restore function for catastrophic failures, historical weather reports for research context, and integration with the FTM Connect mobile app.
FTM Connect 2.0 and Connect Workspace: The Connect Workspace in FTM 2024 and the companion FTM Connect 2.0 mobile app (available for iOS and Android) allow researchers to share their trees with family members and collaborators on mobile devices. Guest Access through TreeVault lets invited family members view tree details, add research notes, and explore connections — turning what has traditionally been a solitary desktop activity into a more collaborative, family-wide effort.
AlbumWALK: A genuinely innovative feature new to FTM 2024, AlbumWALK is a companion mobile app that turns static photo albums into interactive multimedia experiences. Using a technology Software MacKiev calls SoundSpot, researchers can tap on faces in photographs, record spoken memories about those individuals, and combine photos with audio narration and background music to create mini-documentaries. The resulting albums are backed up via TreeVault and playable within the FTM 2024 desktop application. For researchers working to preserve family stories alongside documentary evidence, this is a distinctive and creative addition.
Photo Darkroom: First introduced in FTM 2017 and expanded in subsequent versions, Photo Darkroom provides tools to restore and enhance old photographs — brightening faded images, reducing scratches, and improving the legibility of historical documents. The original photograph file is preserved unchanged; Photo Darkroom works on a copy.
Color Coding: Expanded in FTM 2024 to allow up to eight colors per individual, Color Coding lets researchers visually organize their tree by DNA line, family branch, research status, or any other criteria. This is particularly useful for genetic genealogy work, where distinguishing which branch of the family a set of individuals belongs to is an ongoing organizational challenge.
Charts and Reports: Family Tree Maker has always excelled at visual output, and FTM 2024 continues that tradition with a comprehensive range of pedigree, descendant, and family group charts, alongside a full library of reports. Charts can be customized extensively and exported for printing or sharing.
Genealogical Data Communication (GEDCOM) Support: FTM 2024 supports GEDCOM import and export, making it possible to move data to and from other platforms. As noted in our earlier GEDCOM article, some data loss during translation is common with any GEDCOM transfer, and FTM’s implementation has historically had some quirks; reviewing imports carefully before relying on them is always advisable. RootsMagic can import FTM files directly without requiring a GEDCOM conversion, which is the preferred migration path for researchers considering a switch.
Next of Kin: A thoughtful addition, Next of Kin is a legally formatted certificate that documents the transfer of ownership of a FTM software license and tree data to a designated heir — ensuring that a researcher’s life’s work can be passed on and continued by a family member after their death.
Co-Pilot Program: A structured onboarding experience that runs in the days following installation, Co-Pilot guides new users through setting up TreeVault, Connect Workspace, and AlbumWALK, and runs a diagnostic check one week after installation to ensure everything is functioning correctly.
Honest Caveats
Family Tree Maker’s strengths are real, but so are its limitations relative to competing products.
DNA integration is limited. FTM 2024 allows researchers to record DNA match information as custom facts attached to individuals — a manual process — but it does not provide automated DNA analysis, a chromosome browser, or the kind of integrated DNA-to-tree matching that dedicated platforms like FamilyTreeDNA (FTDNA) or GEDmatch offer. Compared to RootsMagic’s DNA color coding and Legacy Family Tree’s FAN Club approach to cluster research, FTM’s DNA tools are the weakest area of the application. This is explicitly noted in independent reviews as the most significant area for future development.
The Ancestry dependency is a double-edged sword. The FamilySync integration with Ancestry is Family Tree Maker’s defining competitive advantage — but it also means that researchers who don’t use Ancestry, or who want to work primarily with FamilySearch or other platforms, benefit less from FTM than from alternatives. RootsMagic, for example, offers comparable synchronization with both Ancestry and FamilySearch simultaneously, without the same degree of Ancestry lock-in.
GEDCOM compatibility issues persist. Long-standing user reports of data loss or inaccuracies when importing GEDCOM files from other software remain a known limitation. For researchers migrating into FTM from another program, careful review of the imported data is essential.
Price point. At $79.95 for a new license, FTM 2024 is the most expensive of the major desktop genealogy applications — particularly notable now that Legacy Family Tree 10 is completely free. The one-time purchase model without mandatory subscription is a genuine advantage over some alternatives, but the price is worth factoring into a comparison.
Should You Use Family Tree Maker?
If Ancestry.com is your primary research platform and the FamilySync bidirectional integration is important to your workflow — keeping your desktop tree and your online Ancestry tree perfectly in step — Family Tree Maker 2024 is the clear choice. No other desktop application integrates with Ancestry as deeply or as seamlessly.
If you work primarily outside the Ancestry ecosystem, or if advanced source citation tools, dual Ancestry/FamilySearch synchronization, or native Mac support without compromise are your priorities, RootsMagic 11 may serve you better. And if cost is a factor, Legacy Family Tree 10’s free full-featured offering is difficult to argue against for Windows users.
For Dillman Family Association (DFA) members who maintain an Ancestry tree as their primary online presence — syncing documentary research and DNA hints into a local desktop database — Family Tree Maker 2024 remains one of the most capable and well-supported tools available, backed by a development team that proved its commitment to the product by rescuing it from discontinuation and continuing to invest in it a decade later.
Learn more and download at: mackiev.com/ftm
Family Tree Maker 2024 (version 25.0.2) is available for Windows 7 or later and Mac OS 10.10 or later. New license: $79.95; upgrade pricing available for existing users. TreeVault cloud services are optional at $1.99/month after a three-month free trial. Developed and published by The Software MacKiev Company.
Sources
- Wikipedia, “Family Tree Maker,” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Tree_Maker (accessed May 2026).
- Wikipedia, “Family Tree Maker — Banner Blue Software era,” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Tree_Maker (accessed May 2026).
- Ancestry, “Family Tree Maker Discontinuation,” cited in Wikipedia, “Family Tree Maker,” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Tree_Maker (accessed May 2026).
- Software MacKiev, “Family Tree Maker — History,” mackiev.com/ftm/ (accessed May 2026).
- Software MacKiev, “Family Tree Maker 2024,” mackiev.com/ftm/ (accessed May 2026).
AI Disclosure: This article was researched and written with the assistance of Claude, an AI assistant developed by Anthropic. All facts have been reviewed for accuracy, but readers are encouraged to verify information independently, particularly for time-sensitive details such as pricing and software versions.
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