FamilyTreeDNA Reviews 

I used Family Tree DNA for their mtDNA test and I was soon impressed by the depth in and details of the report i had received from them. It helped me learn more about my maternal ancestry than I ever expected to learn. Their customer service was also fantastic acting quick, friendly, and helpful. One star off only because it could be more user friendly to those like me who are not entirely familiar with it all.

I have been waiting approximately six months for my my Big-Y test results. There were a couple of initial "glitches" which I have deducted one month for. Otherwise it would be seven months. I was told today that the test results will probably be ready in about another month. At that point the process will have taken approximately eight months from order to completion. I'm being kind when I say that I am unhappy with FTDNA's service. The good news is that I probably hold the record for the longest length of time it has taken them to process a kit in their history...

I attended Rootstech25 and visited the FamilytreeDNA booth. I decided to purchase a mod a kit for $119.00. They processed my sample and sent it to their lab. About six weeks later I received results for a Y37dna test. That test only cost $79.00 at the event. Since that time I have tried to contact FamilytreeDNA twice. I finally placed a stop payment with my credit card company, but to date, no response from the company.
FamilytreeDNA seemed to have good reviews until the beginning of this year, now they are terrible!

buy the Family Finder kit since 10 days now nothing came to me and the support did not reply i asked for refund waiting for them to respond they say 4 business days but tell today no answer from them or support really best customer service

this is update to FamilyTreeDNA it was a mistake by me i purchase it throw this website familytreedna.ae I guess i have been scammed by them sorry FamilyTreeDNA if you want the number that contacted me by email and phone number just email me
sorry again

It's good that they have made updates to their mitochondrial test results. However, these still remain mostly meaningless since they do not provide timings for mitotree branches, while at times, depending on which tab you look at, the results seem to contradict each other.

Their staff are also no help at all, sending meaningless one-sentence replies to questions or even referring people to Facebook groups for answers. I've never seen anyone so provokingly indifferent. The supposed chat doesn't even work. Nobody answers it.

I got much more meaningful results from YFull. Ideally all samples from FTDNA would appear on YFull, where the answers are much clearer and include estimated dates.

Cons:
1: In app group projects activity feed. No way to communicate with other members. Or notifications if someone answers in the feed. Not big deal but would be nice.

Pros: New MTDNA Mitotree. Finally an update from scientific community for mitochondrial dna. Hopefully this will bring to a halt all the naysayers of mtDNA being helpful.

Staff is friendly and helpful. They have some admin issues in their corporate social media groups. Hope the best for this company. They are leaders in industry now.

I have paid for all these kits over years, the last two recently. I want access to the older ones. No go. They are kits number: Kit Numbers:
269946, 525047, 787326, B131613, B175103, IN34979, IN34981, IN36988. What has happened to them. Were they deleted?

My experience with FamilyTreeDNA has been extremely frustrating. After waiting weeks for my test results, I was informed that due to their “quality issues,” they were unable to process my sample. Their solution was to ask me to pay another €50 to send a new sample, with no guarantee that it would work the second time either.
I refused, as this clearly goes against consumer rights. Instead of taking responsibility, they tried to shift the blame onto me, as if I was responsible for their processing failure. After a long back-and-forth, they finally agreed to issue a refund.

Despite repeatedly assuring me that I would receive my money back via PayPal soon, it has now been over two weeks, and I have still not received anything. They are now completely ignoring me.
This entire process has been exhausting, and I still do not have my money back. I would not recommend this company to anyone.

Atrocious customer service, I paid for a "Family Ancestry Kit" on Monday, January 13th, and I received nothing, no email confirmation, no feedback. I contacted the customer service and explained the issue, after 2 weeks of emails back and forth, nothing!

Slow website. Poor matching algorithm. Inaccurate genealogy even between first degree cousins.
Atrocious customer service. They basically provide no apology nor excuses for results delay.

"Sorry, we were unable to generate your matches. Please click the button below to try again."

That happens all the time, and the rest of the site is so slow that it's unusable. Like many other companies, Family Tree focuses on aggressive marketing instead of delivering a reliable service.

Avoid.

As someone who didn't know much about his family history, FTDNA helped me discover more about my roots and ancestors. As a male, Big Y was an amazing tools that helped me understand where my ancestors migrated from. :)

Their game changer Big Y-700 test helped me breakthrough a brick wall I had in my ancestry with a 3rd and 6th Great Grand-Father. The Big Y and mtDNA tests with accompanying tools are it's strength. I recommend you go all they way with your Y-DNA testing with the Big Y and not settle for the lesser tests.

Is really the only Y-DNA site (for males only), even worth considering testing at. They by and far, have the largest Y-DNA database so most people will get their closest matches. There are other test sites like Y-Seq, and others, but FTDNA does not allow uploads of Y-DNA results (Exactly like Ancestry does not allow Autosomal uploads from other sites). One thing you can do is take your FTDNA results and upload to Yfull.com, this is especially useful for folks over on the Europe side, as well as picking up additional testers from a variety of other Y-DNA test sites.

The Y-DNA testing is much more involved than the quick and dirty and very low cost Autosomal test (different type of DNA), and is quite a lot of lab work. Personally, with the much higher volume of testers, more automated labs, and all that, the prices should have easily dropped to half by now, but since they are the 800 lbs Gorilla in the market, they get to still command top dollar.

Y-DNA testing is not anywhere close to the level of testing that we find in the autosomal market, so don't expect a bunch of close matches like you do with Ancestry. Some may have 5, some will not find a close ancestor in the past 2,000 years, others may find 30 close matches. This will improve greatly with time, especially with the volumes picking up. And also keep in mind this is only testing the father's father's father's and on back, so it is very narrow and specific, unlike autosomal that is a great big V, and thus a lot more matches.

But Y-DNA does not dilute like autosomal over time as autosomal divides and recombines, and gets quite sketchy for matches by 1700 (if it even reaches that on some lines). It is passed down fully intact for 10's of thousands and even much further back. Except random mutations that occur every ~80 years, and are then passed down to all that man's sons.

With anything below the Y-700 Big-Y test, it won't be of a whole lot of use, so if you go this route, plan on that test. However, you can order a lower level test, like the Y-67, and upgrade at a later date, but it will cost less in the end to do it all up front.

As time goes on, and new people test you will discover more matches, but you may be waiting for seven years to get one. Another approach is to work your genealogy tree, find someone that descends from your 6th GGF, and work on getting them tested. Y will definitely show a match, where Autosomal often will not. This can confirm your lineage, or even help you understand why you cannot find anything, and interesting things like your matches, or should be matches do not carry your surname, and digging deeper you find 5GGF died in the Rev War, his wife remarried, and all the kids of the first man took on the surname of the second husband.

I've knocked them down by one star because of multiple people I worked with in the past year had some difficulties cause by hiccups, usually transfers from the lab computer system to the system users interface with. But to their credit, all the situations were eventually resolved, some requiring weekly calls over an extensive period of time. One call should get the problem resolved, but when there is a problem it usually takes more than that, and only one time so far did it take 20 calls, and yes, it was their fault, and not a testing problem or restart. This may be due to their growing pains, hopefully they can get these things resolved. It would be nice if they were proactive and discovered the problems before hand, and notified the user they were having some difficulties. And really it should not have taken more than a week for any of these to be resolved, instead of months and months (but in only one case).

However, their Family Finder test database is definitely one of the smallest ones out there, if you are not familiar, this is the low cost Autosomal DNA version of the test that places like Ancestry, 23andMe, MyHeritage, etc. do. In fact if you look hard enough, one can find these tests for under 10 dollars, except Ancestry, which you can atypically find for 38 dollars. Ancestry.com would be the #1 site by far, to test Autosomal DNA. Why? They have +25 million people tested, and you will find the most matches with Ancestry, where FTDNA only has about 1.6 million testers, so most folks will get 14x the matches. 23andMe has ~14 million testers. MyHeritage has about 8.5 million testers.

I would not have solved a family mystery if it wasn't for FTDNA and the Big-Y test.

I used this company for determining my Y chromosome haplogroup and to see whether there were others out there with a close match to me, especially as I have a rare surname. I got precisely what I asked for and with the added bonus of discovering other, long way back, cousins who shared my surname. I believe that this company is the best on the market for this.

I am 10 years customer and satisfied

Been working with them for 25 years. They can do things that no one else can do because of their leadership in Y-DNA testing.

FamilyTreeDNA excels in Y-DNA and mtDNA testing, which are crucial for anyone delving into their direct patrilineal or matrilineal ancestry. The tools provided, like detailed haplogroup reports and migration maps, give users a profound understanding of their lineage.

Moreover, the group projects facilitate invaluable collaboration with others on similar ancestry paths, which I found extremely enriching. While these tests are pricier, leading to a smaller testing pool compared to autosomal DNA tests, the depth and specificity of information are unmatched, making them worth the investment for serious genealogists.

For those looking to explore their ancient lineage with precision, FamilyTreeDNA is unmatched.

Over the last 20 years, I've tested with at least 7 or 8 DNA companies, 2 or 3 which do not exist anymore. FTDNA is the most advanced of these, bar none. The only company I am aware of that tests yDNA, mtDNA and Autosomal DNA. I have had several of my close and remote family members tested as well. No company is perfect, but after 15 years with FTDNA, I have no complaints. I trust them with my data - more than any other company. DNA testing is a developing science. If they (FTDNA) come out with new tests, I will be sure to have those done as well.