* Hetzner.de for servers (I've been using their physical servers for many years now, incredible performance per € spent)

* Fernand as your CRM, it's smooth and nice and so much better and faster than all the zendesks and freshdesks it's not even funny. (https://getfernand.com/)

* AISLER if you design electronics and need to make PCBs (https://aisler.net/)

I use mailbox for a long time, one account for 2.50EUR/month with multiple custom domains and I can send emails from any address. To send from a different address the process didn't really seem different than other providers.

From Thunderbird mobile on Android I just add a new sender identity. If I need to send from webmail, similarly I just add a new alternative sender. Are these the workarounds you mentioned?

My main goal is simply to avoid giving money or data directly to US corporations. I have no illusions, these non-US services probably still benefit US companies in some ways.

They’re rare, but I’ve consciously decided to stay away from some Canadian alternatives. The main customers of most Canadian tech companies are in the US, and I feel they would happily move there if needed.

I started with this:

Gmail / Drive → Proton Mail / Drive

NameCheap / GoDaddy → Infomaniak

Google Maps → TomTom

Google Chrome → Vivaldi

Google Search → Startpage (Vivaldi default)

GitHub → Codeberg & Codefloe (for private)

I do like Proton Mail. The main thing I hate is how often the app and web versions get out of sync for read and archive states.

I’m really happy with Infomaniak, migrating all my domains was a breeze.

Vivaldi is based on the Chrome codebase, but I really love all the extra customization options. It was a very easy switch.

Startpage took me some time to get used to. It’s not as good as Google, but whatever.

TomTom isn’t great, but it’s not like Maps has been great over the last few years either.

Forgejo is much better than what GitHub has become.

Next, I’m thinking of moving away from Google Photos. I’m considering pCloud for that.

Because it's trending. Likely the same reason they ended up outside the EU in the first place.

I find this to be a non article. They moved from Google to Google and Apple, installed Graphene but installed the play store for a "significant number of apps", and didn't even consider self hosting email or git.

I've probably seen a dozen of these articles now, not to mention posts on LinkedIn, and it's a shame that there is almost never any real substance to them because on the surface it's an interesting thought experiment

[1]: https://ecosia.org

[2]: https://qwant.com

[3]: https://uruky.com

Oh, and you might be in a reasonable EU country and still be hit with an EIO from one of the unreasonable countries. This is especially concerning given recent ECJ rulings increasingly directing courts in receiving nations to blindly defer to the requesting party when dealing with EAWs, EIOs and similar.

Worth considering when hosting in the EU.

and ofc, non-CN too

If not, happy to hear any criticism or the alternatives you decided to go with instead.

[0]: https://www.uxwizz.com

a) migrating to a different jurisdiction isn't realistically a massive barrier for them (related: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf)

b) if they're taking the time to get a "secret" warrant for you, you have much larger issues. It's like building a car that's resistant to hellfire missiles. It'll help, but if you're getting hellfire missiles thrown at you, you have much larger problems than the structural integrity of your vehicle.

Realistically, there's a reason that a lot of these services are underused. Many of them lack reliable support, many of them aren't as useful, and the vast majority lack the interconnectivity that makes services like Drive and Gmail so useful to the vast majority of consumers. In addition, if your evaluation of the utility of US companies is based on which party is in power, you should know that both parties equally don't care about your privacy, and never have.

Didn't the Snowden leaks just prove that the NSA is listening to most things anyway?

I suppose this has more to do with the specific case of a lower-level agency being able to access your data, rather than it being actually secure?

I get that people would be concerned about that scenario, but also it seems like a little bit of hair-splitting.

I self host most services: contacts, calendar, git, ..

Agree on mullvad, buy giftcard on amazon.

Tried hetzner, but it wouldn't allow me to create an account. Ovh it is.

I haven't thought about registrars, I don't think it matters for most tld. (Moniker, porkbun)

I have been frustrated with ProtonMail for this exact reason, i have a catch all but responding is a hassle where i have to manually create an address.

I wish Proton would just allow me to respond to an email from the address it was addressed to

Issues and PRs would be a bonus, but not a requirement in my case.

Yes, gitea (and originally gogs) are released under permissive licenses, so it's legally allowed to fork them.

But forking complete working projects with years of work, rebranding with a "good guys" attitude, and progressively erasing the name/history (mentioning a gitea fork has moved down the faq now) is not fair.

Edit: even worse, the word "fork" is not in the FAQ. It is "Comparison with Gitea" now (fork is mentioned on that page).

I recommend Scaleway for cloud hosting. I recently migrated from Digital Ocean who I really loved, to Scaleway and have I have to say impressed with both dashboard interface and pricing so far.

In work we still use AWS but everything is hosted in eu-west (Ireland) in AWS EU Sovereign cloud but not sure how truly compliant this is in a CloudAct vs GDPR showdown.

I've yet to migrate from namecheap but planning on moving my domains to inwx. My MacBook Pro will be hard to replace so that will be years away. Nothing phones look cool but I would like to go with EU solutions rather than British ones. https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-phone-sep-ii-2026 looks cool but some the HackerNews guys have been quite critical so I'm still considering what those next devices will be.

Github: https://github.com/VladSez/easy-invoice-pdf

It doesn’t have any backend and all data is stored in the browser.

I have not done any research into this facet of EU laws, but isn't the EU simply horrible when it comes to privacy of your data from a nosy government?

I had read about other problems about this mailbox.org service, but not this one. Anyone knows what's the catch when trying to send emails from your own domain?

→ https://allquiet.app

How did they prove that? Is such proof even possible?

Then again one of my wife’s friends is high up in the Canadian policy establishment and some of her positions on surveillance and political control over social media were chilling, and I assume widespread among the Five Eyes. Certainly the UK and Australia have deeply authoritarian policies far beyond even Trump’s wildest dreams.

Small countries like Iceland have enlightened policies but are vulnerable to coercion and in fact were militarily occupied during WW2.

And in terms of degoogled phones, I like the idea, but the conspiracy theorist in me tells me, "hhhhmmmm, people are leaving the google / apple ecosystem, and the best phones out there for degooling is Pixel phones by google..."

That's like the best move Google made, their "free" services are the main driver for selling their phones.

I don't understand why people keep saying this when Europe is more hostile towards privacy.

The constantly insist on schemes like chat control, and GrapheneOS users are often confronted by legal authorities.

They may have "the laws", but its way less trust worthy.

Other than them suddenly and arbitrarily deleting your account on a week's notice if you chose to have been born in the wrong country, they're great.

Arbitrarily because you can always email them and explain why you chose to be born in the wrong country and how you're actually one of the good ones.

But you don't understand: most of their employees are from a country that the wrong country is currently in conflict with, so they can't stand idly by while you sit there with your birth certificate hanging over you.

This is laughable. The EU has the most big-tech regulatory capture friendly data laws that make it really hard for small companies to compete, nicely packaged under consumer protection pretenses.

Those same laws give the institutions of the state complete and total right to silently wiretap the digital existence of anyone, at any time, for any reason.

A Nextcloud can give you many things at once, file syncing, file shares, contact syncing, calendar syncing, etc.

I have been using this for years now after having hosted my own Nextcloud instance. The space and performance they give you for that price is unbeatable with nearly no downsides. The one downside is that you can't just ssh into the server, but you can even run occ managment commands via their web interface. It is an absolute no-brainer.

I've gone back to FastMail for the time being

I think what I really want is:

- FastMail or similar for sending, and receiving new emails

- An email archive system that syncs from my main email provider, deleting from the remote anything over eg 4 weeks old

I like hosted providers for their IP reputation, spam systems, deliverability etc (and in the case of FM, the excellent web UI) but I don't like them having 15 years of my email which they can read whenever they wish. (edit: yes, I realise they could just keep copies)

Does anyone else have this kind of set up? Any recommendations to remove the pain of having a mailbox split into 2?

But I don't think there's anything as good as Fastmail this side of the pond, and I'm not prepared to compromise on this just yet. I might self-host email despite all the dangers the day FM decides to enshittify itself.

So criticisms about these kind of posts and initiatives along the lines of "EU privacy bad too" are insufficient and are unpersuasive.

"Migrating to the EU" is serving a self-fulfilling delusion just as joining the so -called revolutionary forces after WW2 and moving to eastern Europe.

The EU does everything to de-industrialize itself and protect its ground by using surveillance tools branded as "child protection" rules.

Europeans don't have any tradition in thinking in freedom, in civil rights, in having a state that isn't there to spoil you, but grant basic service to allow you to shape your life the way you want it. Instead, Europeans hunger for "the state", thrive under more and more "protection rules" and supervision over the economy.

Anything and everything that requires financial and economic freedom is deemed suspicious and under the disguise of equality needs to be taxed into the ground.

Almost no one takes offense by the fact that the predominant topics in the EU center around perceived life-style threads all caused by one person thousands of miles away while wondering that the quality of life and public service going down the hill and every still existing local newspaper looks like an international outlet like New York Times: local topics don't exist. Anything and everything has to be linked to something that can be linked to "the fight against XYZ" not simply pragmatism or anything rational.

In Germany there is a former major party imploding in record time, having absolutely no representation anymore. And what these radicals do, is building a self-serving kraken, that checks off any and every checkmark of an totalitarian playbook.

And this shall be the basis for making my future depend an services having to exist within these given circumstances?

The genius thing about US constitution is the inherit limitation of terms. You see exactly the opposite in anything and everything in the EU and Germany. 14 or 16+ years of being in control means there was never any need to readjust.

I am more than happy and willing to move everything out of the EU.

Given the fact that europeans think, that a "Hosted in the EU" service is 100% European (whatever the term means) is some sort of discriminatory - something that is dealing with the double standard rampant in the EU.

BTW, I am still waiting for full autonomy: nothing from Github or any open source project that traces back to Github was used in this service.

European arrogance is so disgusting. Instead of simply changing the tune and accepting the fact, that different circumstances lead to different results, there is some sort of ego distorting the decision making process.

How much more evidence is needed, that the EU is lost compared to services done in the US? And you should look at the whole picture, instead of using your gut to draw conclusions.

I admire and acknowledge anything and everything that has been achieved in the US in regards to Computer Science.

I will never ever migrate to the EU. Never.

Not having the gumption to actually give it up. Pathetic.