How to Build a Fully Sovereign European SaaS Stack

Building a fully sovereign European SaaS stack is no longer a theoretical exercise. The European software ecosystem has matured to the point where every category has credible, often superior, alternatives.

Communication & Email

• Tutanota (Germany): End-to-end encrypted email with zero-knowledge architecture
• Proton Mail (Switzerland): Established encrypted email with calendar and drive
• Open-Xchange (Germany): Full groupware suite for enterprises

Cloud Infrastructure

• Hetzner (Germany): Outstanding price-performance for compute and storage
• OVHcloud (France): Full-spectrum cloud with EU sovereignty guarantees
• Scaleway (France): Developer-friendly cloud with innovative pricing

Analytics

• Matomo (New Zealand/EU operations): Privacy-first analytics, self-hosted or cloud
• Plausible (Estonia): Lightweight, GDPR-compliant by design
• Fathom (Canada/EU presence): Simple, privacy-focused analytics

Project Management

• OpenProject (Germany): Open-source project management with Gantt charts
• Hive (UK): Flexible project and workflow management

CRM

• CentralStationCRM (Germany): Simple, effective CRM for SMBs
• Twenty (France): Open-source CRM built for the modern era

Documents & Collaboration

• Nextcloud (Germany): Complete collaboration platform, self-hosted
• CryptPad (France): End-to-end encrypted collaborative editing
• ONLYOFFICE (Latvia): Full office suite with collaboration features

The Migration Path

Don't attempt to switch everything at once. Prioritise by risk:

1. High risk: Email, cloud storage, analytics (process the most personal data)
2. Medium risk: CRM, project management (contain business-sensitive data)
3. Lower risk: Development tools, internal utilities

Each migration should include a parallel-running period, data verification, and team training.