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What Free Online Service Are Surprised People Don’t Use More Often? Here’s What People Said.

Have you ever used Ancestry.com?

It’s really fascinating to use it to conduct research and it’s free with a library membership in a lot of places which, by the way, is also free…

But that’s just one of many free resources that are available online.

Let’s hear from AskReddit users about some other good ones we should be taking advantage of.

1. Good one!

“Kanopy offers free movies through the library, including Studio A24, Criterion Collection, and Great Courses.”

2. Get your read on.

“librivox.org a group that has people read public domain books so you can listen to them for free.

Great phone app.

I recommend the History of England by David Hume and Ulysses S Grant autobiograpy.”

3. LOL.

“McBroken.com.

Check to see if your local McDonald’s ice cream machine is functioning.”

4. Sounds cool.

“https://archive.org/

You can find a lot of weird stuff on there you wouldn’t expect. Someone uploaded the entire video archive of this youtube channel I followed on there. They deleted almost everything on their channel so it was cool to be able to download it all from this site.

Also been very helpful for weird projects I’ve been doing to get access to like Old Gothic-English dictionaries that were published in 1912 or whatever.”

5. Family research.

“familysearch.org. It’s a free genealogy research website.

They have military records, full census records, immigration records, birth/marriage/death certificates, Christenings, links to findagrave.com to the relative you’re looking for. Also, the findagrave.com website posts the full obituary, as well as parent’s & sibling’s names.

Sometimes I couldn’t find parent’s names anywhere else, but because they were listed in the obituary, they were also listed on the website. You can just keep following all those links until you run out (until the records are so old they’re not documented as thoroughly), then go back to familysearch to see if they have any more traces.

If you’ve ever thought about registering for Ancestry.com (at $50 per month), use familysearch & findagrave first so you have a lot of people to enter into your family tree to get the most out of that website.”

6. For your taxes.

“freetaxusa.com.

I paid h&r block for years, but started filing with freetaxusa a few years ago, and it’s so easy and free.

I even filed taxes for an LLC I had a couple of times, there may be a small fee, but its way cheaper than the $500 minimum an accountant charges.”

7. Down the wormhole.

“wormhole.app

Send large files securely (end-to-end encrypted) and fast (you ca start downloading before upload finishes).”

8. FYI.

“Musictheory.net

If you are new to music and want to learn, or are already familiar and want to sharpen your skills, it’s a great resource.

So many lessons and exercises, ear training modules, etc.”

9. Story time.

“https://hiveword.com/

I’m an aspiring writer and this site is great for keeping track of every aspect of my stories. You can add chapters and scenes, the character creation tools can help you make your characters more in-depth, and you can also add plotlines and items, not to mention that you can even bulk add these things too, which is great for people who don’t want to keep clicking their mice 😀

Nearly everything is free to use (there IS a paid option, but I don’t think the paid features would be that important for most users)

You should check it out.”

10. Rewards.

“Microsoft Rewards.

I don’t even remember how but I managed to amass like 40,000 points over the years, and you can use them on gift cards and stuff.”

11. What is that?

“PlantNet.

It’s a great app that lets you take a picture of a plant and it tries to identify what the plant is.

Super useful hiking in the woods, but I’ve also used it when someone had a cool houseplant and forgot what it was.”

12. I did not know that!

“Pirateship.com

If you ship packages, do it through them.

No cost to use and you get access to bulk rates which are way cheaper than retail for USPS and UPS.”

What do you think?

Talk to us in the comments and let us know.

We look forward to it!