It is not the company’s registered office that is decisive

The question of European alternatives to Gmail, Microsoft Office, Google Analytics, AWS or Adobe products is often answered by looking at where the company is headquartered. This overview takes a different approach: it examines not only who owns a company, but also where its services are actually operated.

The background to this is potential exposure to the US Cloud Act. The Cloud Act may oblige US providers to hand over data that is in their possession, custody or under their control. This applies

regardless of the location of the data. If a European service uses a US provider as a sub-contractor, this may result in additional access and

Data transfer conflicts may arise. The actual extent of this risk depends, amongst other things, on data flow, encryption, key management and the terms of the contract.

This approach is particularly relevant for media companies because software now affects all areas of work: editorial and communications as well as marketing, sales, customer relations, data analysis, content production and hosting, and extends right through to the products themselves.

This overview therefore focuses primarily on solutions involving

• own infrastructure,

• Options for self-hosting or local operation,

• End-to-end encryption.

As a result, every selection process is expanding beyond a mere comparison of products to include the question of how much control a company wishes to retain over data and infrastructure.

There are several high-performance European email providers. Tuta Based in Germany, the company combines email and calendar services with end-to-end encryption and operates its own cloud infrastructure. mailbox.org offers business email hosted on German servers. Proton Mail operates its own servers in Switzerland.

Europe also offers alternatives for other communication services. Threema This Swiss-based service acts as an encrypted alternative to messaging apps such as WhatsApp and does not require a telephone number. Mastodon is regarded as a decentralised and ad-free alternative to X. For video publishing, the French PeerTube Suitable: The platform is decentralised and can be run independently.

This area is particularly relevant for publishers, as communication does not only concern internal processes. Email, social media platforms and video form part of editorial distribution and also serve as platforms for direct contact with readers, authors and business partners.

Another key focus is on tools for files, documents and collaboration. Instead of Google Drive or Dropbox, there is Nextcloud. This platform can be run on your own infrastructure and brings together, amongst other things, storage, calendars and documents.

LibreOffice is a well-known, free, locally installed alternative to Microsoft Office. Among other things, the software opens Word and Excel files. For collaborative work on documents, there is CryptPad, which can be self-hosted and is end-to-end encrypted.

Further examples show the extent to which reliance on cloud services can be reduced: Joplin serves as an encrypted note-taking system and can be synchronised via its own Nextcloud, for example. Vicuña covers tasks, projects and Kanban boards. Stirling PDF processes PDF files locally, whilst LanguageTool checks spelling, grammar and style, and can also be used offline.

A significant proportion of the digital office environment can therefore, in principle, also be covered by European or locally managed solutions.

For digital publishers, the topic of ‘Web, Marketing & Business’ is likely to be particularly important. As an alternative to Google Analytics, Europe’s leading digital player, Estonia, offers Plausible Analytics . The solution does not use cookies at all, has an infrastructure based within the EU and can also be self-hosted.

For search engines, Qwant well-known in France; for Chrome, the Norwegian browser Vivaldi. Shopware is being launched as a self-hosted alternative to Shopify.

The choice becomes even more fundamental when it comes to domains, hosting and cloud infrastructure. As far as GoDaddy is concerned, the German hosting providers IONOS and Hetzner are now on the scene as alternatives to AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform Hetzner, OVHcloud, Scaleway and STACKIT.

It is precisely here that the crux of this choice becomes apparent: anyone who simply replaces the application without considering the underlying infrastructure has only solved part of the problem.

The list of alternatives extends to content production. For image editing and illustration, there are the open-source programmes GIMP and Krita are available as alternatives to Photoshop that can be run locally. When it comes to video editing, Kdenlive and Shotcut are available. Both operate locally, so that raw video files can remain on your own system, depending on the source. OBS Studio is regarded as a locally running alternative for screen recording and streaming.

For media organisations, this area is by no means a minor one: images, video and streaming have long been integral parts of editorial and marketing workflows. Decisions regarding the software used therefore increasingly affect production data and unpublished material as well.

Many well-known providers have been included; what is perhaps more noteworthy, however, is which ones are missing. This is because services have been excluded where an assessment of their ownership or infrastructure revealed that they did not meet the specified criteria.

Take DeepL, for example. The Cologne-based company now uses AWS as a subcontracted data processor and therefore no longer meets strict assessment criteria.

Cal.com, Inc. is a US company and, with Cal.diy a self-hostable open-source community edition is available. According to its own documentation, Cal.diy expressly recommended for personal, non-commercial use only. The open-source project Jitsi is supported by the US company 8x8; Jitsi Meet can also be operated on the customer’s own infrastructure. For both solutions, therefore, the service operated by the respective US provider and the in-house version must be assessed separately.

For publishing companies, one thing can be deduced from all this: the debate surrounding European software now extends far beyond data protection and IT departments. It has a direct impact on core processes within editorial, marketing, production and sales departments. Heads of all departments should therefore have a clear view on issues of digital sovereignty.

The more than 35 alternatives listed also show that switching does not necessarily mean having to do without essential functions. In many categories, there are various models to choose from: European cloud services, software with your own infrastructure, self-hosted systems and open-source programmes that run locally.

The key question, therefore, is not so much whether a tool originates from Europe. What matters is how determined a media company is to reduce its technological dependence and retain control over its data. Anyone wishing to answer this question must look not only at the provider, but at the entire technical chain behind it.

The article is part of the Channels: Digital Publishing Technologies, which focuses on content strategies and processes. The channel is sponsored by Fabasoft Xpublisher.