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I scanned 307 "European" SaaS tools and 70% depend on US infrastructure (lemmy.cafe)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Went through 307 SaaS tools that market themselves as European or EU based and checked what actually sits under the hood: hosting, CDN, DNS, email, analytics.

70% have at least one hard dependency on a US provider. Most common:

  • Google in the stack of 118 of 307 (mostly Workspace mail, plus fonts and analytics)
  • Cloudflare in front of 111
  • AWS hosting 70
  • Microsoft 35

None of this shows up on their marketing pages. You read "hosted in the EU" and the mail still routes through Google, the site still sits behind Cloudflare.

The cleaner side: 91 of the 307 had no US dependency at all. Most common EU providers there were Hetzner, Scaleway, Bunny and TransIP. So an EU only stack is genuinely doable in 2026, it is just rarer than the marketing suggests.

Happy to share the full list and methodology if anyone wants it.

all 17 comments

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[โ€“] 25 points 2 months ago (1 child)

I'd be interested in seeing the full list

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    • [โ€“] 14 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    This is interesting but not useful without the list. How about a management summary of the big ones or perhaps the 91 who's marketing team is honest, I guess they deserve the shoutout.

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  • [โ€“] [S] 7 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    big ones: google's in 118 of the 307, cloudflare in front of 111, aws ~70, microsoft ~35. that's the 70%.

    clean side is mostly hetzner, some ovh and infomaniak. handful that were spotless top to bottom: forgejo, kimai, keila, solidtime, vantevo, nordname. nordname's even on desec for dns, nice. full breakdown + method here euroseal.pages.dev/audit

    didn't name the offenders one by one, a single scan can be wrong about any given company and that's not fair to pin on them

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  • [โ€“] 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Thanks for sharing and doing the work, but i would like to say the fact you left out the url in the first place gives me the feeling you post this is as an ad for the service and not as sharing information. Personally i would mind promoting a service you put effort in less than being vague about it. Especially since the service is related to the transparency of others i want to share that with you. Not sure about the rules of this community, might be a valid reason to not directly link to https://euroseal.pages.dev/audit.

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  • [โ€“] [S] 9 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    fair hit, and yeah the irony of a transparency thing being cagey isn't lost on me

    honest reason: link posts from new accounts get auto-nuked on reddit and i wasn't sure about the rules here, so i kept it out to avoid the filter, came across worse than intended

    so openly: euroseal is mine, i'm building it, the audit is real and the method's public so anyone can redo it, but yeah i've got a horse in this

    appreciate you saying it straight instead of just downvoting

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  • [โ€“] 6 points 2 months ago

    but yeah i've got a horse in this

    Hope your horse will take you far. It's good to keep companies responsible for their choices. I feel in general certification is a good way to do that. Don't think you picked up a light task there, but i wish you all the best.

    And welcome to Lemmy :).

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    • [โ€“] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    SaaS is BS at least and digital slavery at worst.

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  • [โ€“] [S] 7 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    fair. half the clean list is self-hostable foss anyway (forgejo, kimai), so no argument here. the audit's just about the ones quietly selling saas on us infra while waving an eu flag

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    • [โ€“] 5 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Electronic signatures 100% US hosted?

    Damn.

    But, thanks for doing this

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    • [โ€“] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Good job. This, of course, is a process. I don't expect all companies to be 100% "pure", in this short amount of time. But every step in this direction is a good thing, I still prefer a European tool that uses some American infrastructure, than an American big tech.

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  • [โ€“] [S] 1 point 2 months ago

    yeah that's how i see it too, it's not about being 100% pure. a eu tool with one us dependency is already miles ahead of full us big tech, and easier to finish the job later

    the audit's just there to make the hidden part visible, not to shame anyone

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    • [+] 1 point 2 months ago
    [deleted]
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    [โ€“] 1 point 2 months ago

    Europe can't compete with the USA, because the USA is extremely imperialist+Capitalist country, and money is its god. They do not care about human life/heath or mental health.

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    [โ€“] 0 points 2 months ago

    https://staysin.eu/

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