European Alternatives to Big Tech
Which services we use largely determines the jurisdiction under which our data lives. Big Tech benefits from an arrangement in which European users remain nominally protected by GDPR while their data flows through providers bound by non-EU legislation such as the US Cloud Act.
US vendors increasingly market "sovereign" versions of their platforms while their parent companies remain subject to the US Cloud Act, which can compel disclosure of data stored anywhere in the world, including on EU servers. True sovereignty therefore cannot be achieved through contractual clauses alone. It requires providers whose legal basis lies entirely within Europe and whose code, ideally, can be independently audited.
Email and calendar replace Gmail, Outlook, and Exchange. Providers such as Proton, Tuta, Mailbox.org, and Posteo host data within the EU under GDPR by default, and several offer end-to-end encryption for mailbox contents. Since email carries most professional correspondence, it is one of the most consequential categories to migrate.
Office suites replace Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Google Docs, Sheets, Slides. LibreOffice, OnlyOffice, and CryptPad cover editing, spreadsheets, and presentations without routing content through US-based infrastructure. CryptPad additionally applies end-to-end encryption, so that even the platform operator cannot read the documents it hosts.
Video conferencing replaces Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. Alternatives such as Wire, Jitsi, and Whereby keep call data and metadata within EU infrastructure and, in several cases, provide consistent end-to-end encryption without the gaps common in US-based platforms. Meetings increasingly contain the most sensitive operational conversations of an organisation, which increases the importance of data safety.
Cloud storage and file sharing replace OneDrive, SharePoint, and Google Drive. Providers such as Nextcloud, Tresorit, and Internxt offer zero-knowledge encryption, transparent hosting locations, and self-hosting options where needed. Storage is where cross-border data transfers accumulate most quietly, which makes EU-based alternatives particularly relevant for data localisation mandates.
Project management replaces Microsoft Planner, To Do, and Project. European tools such as OpenProject, Taiga, and Kanboard provide transparent governance and self-hosting, keeping workflows under direct organisational control.
Secure collaboration replaces Slack and Microsoft Teams chat. Platforms such as Wire, Element, and Rocket.Chat combine messaging, file sharing, and sometimes voice with end-to-end encryption and EU-hosted or self-hosted deployment. As Slack and Teams form the default substrate of enterprise communication, this category carries some of the strongest lock-in effects and the strongest case for sovereign replacement.