Review Of FamilyLobby.com

Multi Photo Upload

Family Lobby does not have a browser based multi photo upload. They do offer a Active X based tool, but it requires an installation in your browser and is not recommeded for security reasons.

Activity Feed

Family Lobby has a "What's New" section on the home page, but it doesn't seem to include comments or other minor activites, making it difficult for users to determine what the latest activity on the site has been.

Guest Book

Famiy Lobby has a "Guest Book" feature, but it only allows a couple paragraphs of text, is redundant with the discussions section and doesn't seem to add any value.

Family Tree

Family Lobby does have a family tree feature, but it is Flash based, meaning it won't work on mobile devices and many tablets. We also couln't find any support (import/export) for GEDCOM, which is a must for anyone serous about building their family tree.

Video Upload

We were able to upload an mp4 file which is already capable of being played in a browser, however the AVI we uploaded said "Failed. Invalid file. Error - File not found". Most users won't know how to convert their videos, they will just want to upload the file they have from their phone/video camera. This might be a show stopper if you want to share videos.

Problems

We tried to use FamilyLobby's Flash based upload control to upload a and it just hung for a few minutes (with latest version of Firefox). There have been AJAX solutions for file uploads for several years now, so we're not sure why Family Lobby is still using older technologies that are no longer considered best practice.

Bottom Line

If we had to use one word to describe Family Lobby, it would simply be "Outdated". Their main site looks like it was developed in the late 90s and their family website application itself has the same look and feel. They do have a decent amount of features and a lot of configurability but so do most of the other services on our list.

The site is developed using Microsoft's Classic ASP technology. Microsoft abanded Classic ASP around 2000, so the fact that Family Lobby is still using it is fairly concerning and another sign that Family Lobby will be left in the dust by nearly all its competirors that are using more modern development frameworks like Microsoft MVC or PHP.