webtrees: Online collaborative genealogy application

webtrees: Online collaborative genealogy application

webtrees is a self-hosted genealogy / family trees tool. Online collaborative genealogy application.

Why self-host webtrees

Self-hosting webtrees removes the dependency on a third-party service. For anyone who values data ownership, that matters more than convenience in the long run.

What it does

webtrees falls into the Genealogy / Family Trees category of self-hosted software. It is designed to be deployed on your own infrastructure, whether that is a home server, a VPS, or a local machine running Docker.

Deployment

Getting webtrees running usually takes under an hour if you have a working Docker setup. The official documentation covers the basic deployment steps.

Alternatives

If webtrees does not fit your needs, common alternatives include FamilySearch, Ancestry. The self-hosted versions of these tools often differ in resource requirements and feature focus, so it is worth testing the one that matches your workload.

Maturity

The current release is 2.1.20. The project has moved past early development and tends to ship stable, documented releases.

License

It is licensed under GPL-3.0, making it freely available for personal and commercial use.

For anyone already running a home server, webtrees is a natural addition. It handles genealogy / family trees without requiring a paid subscription or an account with a third party.