Guides
European technology alternatives
Europe is losing the technology race, and enterprise shortlists are one of the reasons. Every alternative here is assessed on merit, verdict included.
There are two arguments for choosing European technology, and the weaker one gets made far more often. The defensive argument is about jurisdiction — what the US CLOUD Act reaches, and which of your systems genuinely cannot sit under it. It is real and worth getting precise about, but it only moves organisations that already have a compliance problem.
The stronger argument is competitiveness. Draghi’s report attributes Europe’s productivity gap with the United States mainly to technology, records that no EU company worth over €100 billion has been built from scratch in fifty years, and notes that the largest European cloud operator holds 2% of its own home market. That last figure is not an engineering verdict. It is what tens of thousands of default shortlists add up to.
So these guides do two things: set out the legal position precisely enough to classify your own estate against it, and assess specific alternatives on merit. Both matter, and the second matters more — a vendor propped up by sympathy purchases learns nothing, and an industry built on them does not become competitive.
Each entry carries a verdict: adopt, adopt with caveats, a partial answer, or not yet. They are not all favourable. Two argue against the popular answer — GitLab.com does not solve jurisdiction, and Proton Docs is not ready to carry an organisation — and one assesses our own product, with that conflict stated on it. A list where everything is recommended is a list nobody should trust.
European is not the same as EU
We use European in the broad sense: companies headquartered and owned in Europe, including the UK, Switzerland, Norway and Ukraine. That is the right frame for both arguments. US jurisdiction follows whether a company is American, not whether it is in the single market — and a European technology industry that wrote off London, Zurich and Kyiv would be competing with one hand tied.
| Category | What it means | Examples here |
|---|---|---|
| EU / EEA | The legal set that GDPR, data-residency clauses and public procurement rules refer to. | Mistral (FR), Clever Cloud (FR), Pitch (DE) |
| European, not EU | Outside US jurisdiction, but not inside the EU. Usually covered by an adequacy decision, which is reviewed periodically rather than permanent. | Proton (CH), Attio (UK) |
| European reputation, US company | Feels European, is legally American. Does not answer the jurisdiction question at all. | GitLab Inc. (US) |
If your own policy says "EU/EEA", read it literally — Switzerland and the UK do not satisfy it as written, however good the vendor. If your requirement is really "not under US jurisdiction", say that instead, and the field of options widens considerably.
The alternatives, assessed
| Alternative | Replaces | Jurisdiction | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proton Mail (Proton for Business) | Gmail / Google Workspace mail, Microsoft 365 Exchange Online | Switzerland — outside the EU, but with an EU adequacy decision and no CLOUD Act exposure | Recommended |
| Mistral AI (La Plateforme, Le Chat) | OpenAI ChatGPT / API, Anthropic Claude | France — EU, no CLOUD Act exposure | Recommended with caveats |
| GitLab (self-managed) — or Codeberg / Forgejo for a European vendor | GitHub, GitHub Enterprise Cloud | GitLab Inc. is US-incorporated; Codeberg e.V. is German | Recommended with caveats |
| Proton Docs | Google Docs / Workspace, Microsoft 365 | Switzerland — outside the EU, but with an EU adequacy decision and no CLOUD Act exposure | Not yet |
| Attio | HubSpot CRM, Salesforce Sales Cloud | United Kingdom — outside the US, outside the EU, covered by a UK adequacy decision | Partial answer |
| Pitch | Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides | Germany — EU, no CLOUD Act exposure | Recommended with caveats |
| Clever Cloud | AWS, Microsoft Azure, Vercel, Heroku | France — EU, European-owned, no CLOUD Act exposure | Recommended |
| TransformRadar | monday.com, Asana, Microsoft Project; overlaps with Planisware | EU — hosted in Paris on Clever Cloud, European-owned infrastructure | Recommended with caveats |
- Why European technology is a competitiveness question, not a sovereignty one Sovereignty is the defensive argument. Draghi’s is the bigger one: Europe’s largest cloud operator holds 2% of its own market, and buyers decided that.
- The US CLOUD Act and your European data What the US CLOUD Act actually says, why EU data residency does not remove exposure to it, and how to decide whether it matters for your organisation.
- Proton Mail instead of Gmail and Outlook Moving business email to Proton: what you gain in jurisdiction and encryption, what you give up in admin tooling, and who should not make the move.
- Mistral instead of Claude and ChatGPT A French frontier lab is a genuine EU option for most AI workloads. Where Mistral is a straight swap, and the one area where it is not yet a match.
- GitLab instead of GitHub GitLab is the right direction, but GitLab.com does not solve jurisdiction — GitLab Inc. is a US company. Self-managed is the answer; Codeberg is the purist one.
- Proton Docs instead of Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 The one on this list we do not yet recommend. Proton Docs is a good editor, but a document editor is not a productivity suite, and the gap is the rest of it.
- Attio instead of HubSpot Attio is a strong modern CRM and a partial sovereignty answer — it is British, not EU, and the underlying infrastructure question needs checking.
- Pitch instead of PowerPoint A Berlin-built presentation tool that is better for collaborative decks — with a vendor-viability question to answer before you standardise on it.
- Clever Cloud instead of AWS, Azure and Vercel A French PaaS that runs the workloads most organisations actually have. Where it is a clean swap, and where the hyperscaler catalogue still wins.
- TransformRadar instead of monday.com, Asana, Planisware and Microsoft Project Our own product, held to the same standard as everything else on this list — including the competitor that is already European and the case for not choosing us.