Ask an American genealogist to name the major desktop family tree programs and you will hear RootsMagic, Family Tree Maker, Legacy, maybe Gramps if they lean technical. Ask a French genealogist the same question and you will hear one name before any of those: Heredis. It has been the best-selling genealogy software in France for two decades, runs on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, and yet is close to unknown among the American researchers this site mostly serves. For DFA members working German, Alsatian, or other continental European lines, that obscurity is worth correcting.

A Family Business, Literally

Heredis was founded in 1994 by Bernard David, a computer scientist, and his wife Sylvette David, a family historian, who built the first version as a Mac-native genealogy tool for a family member who wanted something more intuitive than what was available at the time. The company traded under the name BSD Concept and is based in Montpellier, in the south of France. What started as a personal project for one relative became, within a decade, the most widely used genealogy software in the country.

In 2014, on the company’s twentieth anniversary, the Davids did something unusual for a software company: they sold their shares to their employees, converting BSD Concept into a SCOP — a French form of employee-owned cooperative — in which every team member holds a stake in the business. Heredis has now operated under employee ownership for over a decade, a structural detail with no real parallel among the American-market programs covered on this site, though it echoes RootsMagic’s and MacFamilyTree’s independence from the large platform companies (Ancestry, MyHeritage) that own several of their competitors.

Three Decades of Milestones

Heredis added a Windows version in 1995, a year after the original Mac release, and launched an international Mac version in 2001 as it began looking beyond the French market. Expansion into Germany followed in 2004, and by 2006 Heredis had been named France’s favorite genealogy software in national surveys. The Blue Suite of mobile apps arrived in 2012, bringing Heredis to iOS and Android well ahead of most American competitors’ mobile efforts. The company marked both its 30th anniversary and ten years as a cooperative in 2024.

Heredis 2026: Current Capabilities

The current release, Heredis 2026 (also marketed as Heredis 26), is priced at $39.99 for Windows as a one-time purchase covering up to three computers for one user, with a Mac version and a combined Windows-and-Mac bundle also available. There is no subscription requirement for the software itself, though full record access to partner databases like Ancestry or MyHeritage requires those services’ own subscriptions. Companion mobile apps for iOS and Android are free and sync with the desktop database.

This year’s release added several features aimed at modern family structures and historical context rather than raw data capacity: Personal and Family Timelines that visualize an ancestor’s life against key events, a Historical Facts Index showing what was happening in the world during an ancestor’s lifetime, explicit support for distinguishing biological, adoptive, step-, and foster parents rather than forcing every relationship into a single “parent” slot, and the ability to record children who carry both parents’ surnames without inventing an artificial compound name. A new Genealogy Societies Portal connects users directly to genealogical societies, and the mobile apps picked up matching surname and tagging support.

Where It Shines

Heredis ships with more than 200 customizable chart and report styles, a built-in Research Journal for tracking what you have and haven’t searched for each person, and free access to FamilySearch’s record collection of over six billion documents without an additional subscription. Heredis Online lets users generate a free personal genealogy website directly from their tree data, and the software can search against family trees submitted by other Heredis users worldwide — a community-matching feature conceptually similar to MyHeritage’s SmartMatch, covered in our Family Tree Builder review. Standard GEDCOM import and export keeps it compatible with every other program in this series.

Where It Falls Short

Heredis has no DNA match integration of any kind — a real gap for genetic genealogists compared to RootsMagic’s four-platform hint syncing. Reviewers have also consistently flagged the absence of a proper undo function, a notable weakness set against Family Tree Maker’s 5,000-step Turn Back Time system covered in our FTM article. The interface, while modern, is dense enough that reviewers coming from RootsMagic or Family Tree Maker describe a real adjustment period, and the software’s documentation, community forums, and default record partnerships all skew toward French and continental European users first, with English-language support present but secondary.

For DFA Researchers

Heredis is not a program to switch your primary database to unless your research center of gravity is already European. But for anyone in the DFA working Dillman-variant lines back through Alsace, Hesse, or other German-speaking origins — the same cluster of families discussed in our Ancestry AI features piece — Heredis’s European-first design, direct FamilySearch access, and thirty-year track record with French and German civil and church records make it worth a serious look as a secondary research tool, even for researchers who keep their master tree in RootsMagic or Family Tree Maker.

Sources

Heredis. “The True Story of Heredis, Family Tree Software Specialist.” BSD Concept. home.heredis.com.

Heredis. “Heredis 2026 for Windows.” Product listing. shop.heredis.com.

Genea-Musings. “Discover Heredis 2026 For Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android.” geneamusings.com.

DNA Weekly. “Heredis Review: Is This Family Tree Builder Worth It?” dnaweekly.com.

Note: This post was researched and written with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI). All content has been reviewed for accuracy as of September 2026. All errors are the responsibility of the author.