BillionGraves Reviews

I love using BillionGraves, and the cause it is being used for is admirable. But as one of the latest people using BillionGraves , users should mind a couple of quirks when recording headstones.

First off, since it uses both your camera to take the photo, and your location to record where the headstone is, BillionGraves drains your battery FAST. I could usually get about 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours worth of photo taking before needing to charge. Make sure you have some method of charging your phone before starting for a better experience.

And second off, the Uploading of photos. After you finish taking your photos, you can upload them to the website’s database for public use. BillionGraves uploads one picture at a time; and depending on how many photos were taken, and the signal strength of the area, uploading all of your photos will take anywhere from half as long to twice as long as it took to take the photos. Another thing about the upload to keep in mind, is that you HAVE to keep BillionGraves open while it is uploading, or it will pause the upload. And once again, the process eats through your battery very quickly.

So overall, it’s a good app, you just have to be mindful of a few quirks and for goodness sake, keep an eye on your battery.

It’s an interesting app, however it’s search function is flawed. When filling out the criteria for the search you might as well be searching for Santa Claus. Because if you put in the last name. state, city and county of the deceased you get the entire state or at least a subset of it.
BillionGraves developers should be willing to give people accurate information and not fill the screen with tombstone images that aren’t accurate.

BillionGraves should come back with this:

“Sorry this grave has not been photographed. Would you like to have one of our volunteer grave photographers take a picture of your loved ones gravesite? If so, please provide your loved one’s detailed information and we will get the word out.”

Then, when a volunteer is photographing a gravesite they know they are truly helping a family’s memory continue.

Your current database search engine for a deceased is nothing short of a disappointing experience. It should be proactive. Inviting each one to ask for volunteer help in the matter. And not give up in disappointment!

BillionGraves could be an fantastic family experience if I was developing it. Or, if you are willing to really take some advice from an experienced application developer.

Family grave history doesn’t need to be lost!

Denny H.
Naples, Fl

First, I think BillionGraves is great. However, it’s limited. When I go to cemeteries, I only take the photos. I upload them to transcribe later. But you can’t transcribe from BillionGraves ??? I’ve only been able to do this from my computer.
The other major flaw is the inability to upload photos from your camera. I forgot to take the picture of the cemetery entrance on BillionGraves , so I took it with my phone thinking I could update it later. Nope, not a feature.
The photo editing could also be more robust. I’ve found that the filters have not been very helpful when trying to decipher difficult-to-read headstones.

So... room for improvement! But the concept is great. I will keep using it, I just hope they keep improving BillionGraves and the website tools.

I really love what this app does, though BillionGraves isn’t very easy to use. It’s clear that BillionGraves design hasn’t been revisited in a while.

A lot of the buttons are in odd places, and use unclear labels and colors. There are also many bugs and performance issues, so you have to be pretty patient with it. It’s also very hard to tell where photos have already been taken in the cemetery.

Overall, BillionGraves feels clunky and somewhat outdated. Though don’t let this stop you from getting BillionGraves . I think what this organization does is really amazing. Once you use BillionGraves a bit, you can get use to its quirks. Just don’t go in expecting a modern, fast, good-looking app.

I have used the this app app to take more than 60,000 photos. It is awesome! BillionGraves is so easy to use. One click not only takes a photo of the gravestone, but also automatically records its GPS location. When you are done the photos upload to the database straight from your phone (no need to link to a computer). Families and genealogists can then view the gravestone data for free on the this app website. I highly recommend it!

This is a wonderful way to help strangers and keep peoples family histories alive. The brilliant part of BillionGraves is that it will help future generations search for relatives by distance, even if you don’t know the exact cemetery.

Boy scouts can use this as an Eagle Project - even in a pandemic.

And cemeteries are really beautiful places that we should all go visit more often.

BillionGraves makes gathering headstone photos as easy as a walk in the park. I suggest bringing a broom to sweep away dirt and leaves that may be covering the lettering and sweep a whole row. Then walk back while taking pictures of the newly cleaned headstones.

Give it a try. Check their website to see if there are cemeteries near you that aren’t complete and go help complete them. People will benefit from your “walk in the park” for years to come.

I only gave it Three stars as I’m having trouble negotiating app. I take pictures that don’t show. Went back to cemetery and retook which worked. Today took 3 pictures that I can see on phone but I do not see on website. One is picture of cemetery gate and one is a repeat pic that could not be transcribed before—cannot find and when I try to ask for help, I am directed to pages and pages of questions!!

I’ve been working on my family tree for years. I was excited to find BillionGraves. While the cemetery I need is on here. There’s no real easy way to search and some of the uploaded images are very bad with fingers in them taken from weird angles and there’s no way for me to know which images I’ve already looked at on the map. A full list and better images would be very useful. Also away to know what images I’ve already looked at. It’s great having pictures of the grave markers to research and I really hope to be able to utilize BillionGraves in my research.

It’s my first day to volunteer and I gave it one hour in 90 degree temps. I got bit by red ants, climbed up and down vaults and squeezed in small area to take pictures but it was a successful morning. Thanks the the super sweet lady in Utah for her patience helping and educating me today. I took 376 pictures in that one hour. Thus is an amazing app. Thanks to this organization providing all this great history of ancestry. I plan to do as much as I can in my area, South Louisiana.

The setup is easy to do, but there are a lot of problems once you’ve uploaded photos - they’re difficult to find again either with BillionGraves or the website. I found a batch seemingly successfully transcribed, uploaded and even displayed on the map of the cemetery on the website, but when I do a search for a one of the names with either the website or app search tools none of them show up.

In so bad at following instructions, but I found BillionGraves user friendly. The directions left nothing to guess about when using the maps app.
I tell everyone that works on geology to use BillionGraves for an even greater experience.
Thank you for such great technology,
Cynthia Peck

I really like the ability to take photos and plot them with geographic coordinates. The web site and iPhone app are both confusing to use and prone to errors. The resolution of cemetery maps is much less than I expect based on Google maps. I used to be able to open support tickets. Today I need help and I can’t ANY way to contact ANYBODY at BG. I have accepted 3 photo requests over the past year, but have been unable to complete any. Information specified seems inaccurate. Will BG survive?

I really enjoyed participating in a service project to photograph gravestones. The actual photography was easy. I couldn’t get my selfie stick to work with BillionGraves . We had a 5 level mausoleum to photograph, so it was tough to get up over 12 feet to see the top rows. I also had to get help to verify my account, which the tech support was able to do without any complications.
Thank you for BillionGraves! I’ll be looking for a way to do this again.

BillionGraves has too many bugs to mention. First one is pretty lame though: clicking on “Dashboard” BillionGraves closes. Seriously? Apps up to date, as latest build of 2 months ago.

BillionGraves does not scale typeface properly if you are not using the default font size. Some users, myself included, prefer a larger font, but you cannot read it as it overlays on top on the underlying sentence.

I’ll have to continue to use the web version. Kind of a hassle. I’ve recorded hundreds of headstones and prefer ease and speed.

I really enjoy being able to help others find more information on their family❤️ its relaxing to go into the cemeteries and take pictures. It’s exciting to know you might have found a piece to someones puzzle.

I love the premise of BillionGraves and most of it works fine, but whenever I want to transcribe, it doesn’t allow me to zoom on the image to read it and input the information. When I click to just view the photo so I can jot down the information and then transcribe it, BillionGraves crashes. It’s happened several times now and it’s very frustrating.

My wife and I, with our friend Mary, are having a fun time taking photos at a cemetery nearby for an hour or so in the morning and transcribing them later in the day. It’s a great summer activity that gets us out in the beautiful weather doing something productive and interesting.

Using BillionGraves was easy. Some suggestions would be to use lighter colors. While taking photos, it made it hard to see the prompts. Also, there was way ro eliminate all the prompts.

Their is soooo much work to be done that BillionGraves will send me the places people across the world to get these people done and I am going to do my best to do it!

More training would be appreciated.

It would be nice to actually talk to a person- I have spent and hour trying to figure a problem out (which I still don’t have figured out) which would probably take only 5-10 min. if I were talking to a person!!

Difficulty with navigating and finding how to accomplish tasks weather uploading photos or transcribing. It is frustrating. Either you have to dig deep to find the answers or take a lot of time fiddling to figure it out. It has great potential. They just haven’t found a way to make it easy.

My husband and I served a mission in Alabama.
We had a great time cleaning up old cemeteries and getting them uploaded to be put on the site for people to see. It was a uniting experiance.
Thank you BILLION GRAVES❤️

I can find graves on this site when they were lost to everyone.

The map and gps located headstones are the best feature of BillionGraves and are better than find a grave in that aspect

I just downloaded BillionGraves . I try going to the dashboard. I tap it & it completely goes out of BillionGraves & flashes back to my home screen. It does the same if I tap login or login with Facebook.

I downloaded BillionGraves , and when I open it on my iPhone X it goes to the main screen and then closes BillionGraves . So I’ve never gotten to use it. Please fix so I can use and give great review

It’s a nice app, but when I search something and then I leave BillionGraves to check information it sends me back to the home screen

I must do this more often.

This fantastic app helps me find and photograph cemeteries wherever I go. Love it!

I have not been able to get the search function to work at multiple cemeteries. Good aerial views of the cemetery.

BillionGraves is horrible and hard to navigate. It couldn’t find any name that I entered. I quickly deleted it. :(