Terms of Use & Privacy Policy
The short version: Family Tree Keeper is a one-time purchase, not a subscription. Everything you enter — names, dates, stories, photos — stays on your own device. Nothing is ever sent anywhere online, with two narrow, optional exceptions you always choose yourself: sending a book off to be professionally printed, or using the Photo AI feature to colorize or restore a photo. Neither ever happens automatically.
Family Tree Keeper is a family tree and family history app, sold as a one-time purchase in two editions — Basic and Pro — each a separate download with its own storage limits. There is no subscription, no recurring charge, and no ongoing license fee. Once purchased, an edition is yours to keep and use indefinitely.
Purchases are processed by Lemon Squeezy, our payment provider and merchant of record. Lemon Squeezy handles your payment details directly — we never see or store your card information. Your bank or card statement will show a Lemon Squeezy charge, not our name directly. Refunds, receipts, and billing questions are handled through Lemon Squeezy's own purchase confirmation email.
This is the core of how Family Tree Keeper works, not just a policy statement: the app has no user accounts, no login, and — for everything except the two features described below — no server at all. Everything you add is stored locally in your web browser, on your own device.
This also means:
Two features in the app genuinely do send something off your device, and only because you specifically chose to use them, never automatically or in the background:
A third, unrelated option — a link on the Photos screen to a separate, third-party photo-animation service (myfamilystory.com) — is not part of Family Tree Keeper, not affiliated with us, and not something we ever send anything to ourselves; it's simply a link you can choose to follow, the same as any link in an ordinary web page.
You can import a GEDCOM file from another genealogy service, and export your tree back out as GEDCOM, a PDF, or a plain backup file at any time. These exports are created and saved entirely on your own device — nothing is uploaded anywhere as part of this process.
Family Tree Keeper is provided as-is. While we test it thoroughly, including against a real multi-hundred-person family tree, we can't guarantee it will be error-free or uninterrupted, and we're not liable for data loss, including from a failure to back up regularly. Given everything lives on your own device, backing up is genuinely the one thing that protects you here — please don't skip it.
If these terms change, the updated version will be posted here with a new effective date. Continuing to use the app after a change means you accept the update.
Family Tree Keeper is sold worldwide. You must be at least 18, or the age of majority where you live, to make a purchase. It's a general-purpose family history tool with no age restriction on using it once purchased by an adult on a household's behalf.
Because everything you enter stays on your own device and we never collect or hold your family tree data ourselves, most data-protection rights (access, correction, deletion, portability) are things you already fully control yourself, on your own device, at any time — there's no separate request process needed because there's no copy for us to act on.
For the limited purchase-related information Lemon Squeezy does handle as merchant of record (your payment details, receipt, email), residents of the EU/UK have rights under GDPR, and residents of California have rights under the CCPA, in each case exercised directly with Lemon Squeezy as the party actually holding that data — see their own privacy policy for how to do so. We do not sell personal information to anyone, anywhere.
Consumer guarantee laws in some countries (including New Zealand's Consumer Guarantees Act and Australia's Australian Consumer Law) provide rights that can't be excluded by these terms, regardless of anything else stated here — nothing in this document is intended to remove any right you have under the law of your own country that legally can't be waived.
These terms are governed by the laws of New Zealand, without regard to conflict-of-law principles, except where a mandatory consumer-protection law of your own country gives you rights that apply regardless of this choice (see above).
Questions about these terms, your purchase, or your data can be sent to hello@familytreekeeper.com.
Effective date: 23 August 2026.
Note for the site owner (remove before publishing): this is a first working draft, written to accurately reflect exactly how the app actually works today — not generic boilerplate. It is not a substitute for a real legal review. Before this goes live, it's worth a quick pass from an actual lawyer or accountant, particularly around New Zealand consumer law requirements and how GST on overseas sales is described — those specifics were flagged as "worth confirming with whoever already handles the GST returns" in the plan doc, and the same caution applies here.
Added 2026-08-26, same caveat applies: "Who can buy," "Your rights where you live," and "Governing law" are new, added specifically because this is sold worldwide, not just in NZ/Australia. They're a reasonable, honest first pass (age minimum, a plain-language GDPR/CCPA/consumer-guarantee acknowledgment, and a governing-law clause — all real gaps a worldwide-sold product typically needs that weren't here before), but the same "not a substitute for real legal review" caution applies to this new wording just as much as the original draft.