We help you find European alternatives for digital service and products, like cloud services and SaaS products.
A virtual private server (VPS) hoster provides virtual servers with predefined RAM, storage, traffic and virtual cores.
Read the original article
Comments
By culi 2026-01-240:15 In this thread I've seen
- https://altstack.jp for Japan
- https://worktree.ca/taffer/canadian-alternatives for Canada
- and ofc https://european-alternatives.eu/ for the EU
But I just wanted to point out that https://alternativeto.net/ recently (well, over a year ago) added a flag next to each suggestion so you can easily tell where its from. It's all crowd-sourced and I've both contributed to and greatly benefited from the project myself (especially for finding FLOSS alternatives to popular software). Here's an example
https://alternativeto.net/software/github/
I think the fact that it's crowd-sourced gives it a lot more staying power than a lot of these one-off projects that are presumably maintained by a single person or team.
I submitted my project EasyInvoicePDF (a free & open-source invoice generator) a couple of months ago to European Alternatives but never heard back unfortunately.
The project has no backend and is purely browser-based, but I’m based in Europe and developing the project here, so I consider it a European project =)
It's a cool project but it is 'niche'.
I think the purpose of the site is more about the alternatives to 'large players', platforms and infrastructure companies. Still Constantin Graf should have clarified out of politeness but possibly he's busy or doesn't have time to respond to every email.
However I'd point out there is a market for European 'Product Hunt' that would include more of these smaller projects.
By carlosjobim 2026-01-2319:361 reply I don't think creating an invoice is "niche". It is such a common need for users that invoicing software should be included in the operating system application suite. (Which it is somewhat if you consider Pages invoice templates).
Millions and millions of people need to make and send invoices. Many more than people who need domain name registrars, uptime monitoring services, content delivery networks, or microblogging services.
By vldszn 2026-01-2320:37 Hard agree
Thanks for the comment. I hadn’t thought about this before, but it makes sense - I agree.
About European Product Hunt - very good idea.
I was thinking recently that we need more European social networks, messengers, etc.
It’s a very good time to build imo =)
By embedding-shape 2026-01-2318:284 reply > About European Product Hunt - very good idea.
Older members of HN will remember that Product Hunt probably came to life a lot because of HN and the submissions/comments from rrhoover (founder of Product Hunt). He's still active here, but before/during Product Hunt launch he was very active if I remember correctly.
Maybe a grander idea is a European Hacker News, that has the potential to spawn the European Product Hunts of tomorrow :)
There is one, it starts about 11pm my time at https://news.ycombinator.com :)
By embedding-shape 2026-01-2411:14 Good morning :)
By vldszn 2026-01-240:12 =)
I read about https://techposts.eu/ the other day, seems like a decent alternative, but needs some more traction.
By embedding-shape 2026-01-2411:15 No documentation about who runs it, no privacy policy, no words of licensing or anything else. Seems like a good prototype for a start nonetheless.
I can see it now, if you have a European Hacker news, you'll have a bunch of people complaining about how Europe isn't the world and admonish posters to not be so eurocentric on the site --that other people besides Europeans would read it... but anyway, good luck on the endeavour.
By jenadine 2026-01-246:32 I already have this feeling on french-speaking forums where everything is very France-centric despite there are french speaking people from other countries reading it.
By tialaramex 2026-01-2319:072 reply I don't know that an EU Hacker News makes sense, a core EU idea is Freedom of Movement.
This started out as an ideal about Goods. You make a Doodad in Venice, clearly there should be as few obstacles as possible to prevent somebody in Dublin having that Doodad, so no export taxes between Venice and Dublin, shared regulatory framework so that your Venice "This Doodad won't choke a baby/ burn down a house/ spy on you/ etc." paperwork is valid in Dublin, and so on.
But immediately people who make goods said well this rule needs to include Capital, it's great that I can sell Doodads from Venice in Dublin, but if I want to build a Doodad factory in Venice but my money is in Dublin that should be easy too. And Workers realised if it's just Capital and Goods then it's a race to the bottom for Labour, the Capital and Goods will go where it's cheapest but the workers can't move. So very soon Workers can move freely too, in order that Hans the Doodad Engineer can move to Venice and the courts ended up deciding that in practice everybody gets this freedom, a 5 year old can't have a job and a 105 year old probably doesn't want one, but maybe Hans needs to support his 5 year old grand-daughter and his 105 year old grandfather, so Freedom of Movement must apply to all EU citizens.
So, with that idea in mind, I suspect the EU's perspective is that you should come to Europe and write software here, rather than that you should stay exactly where you are and if it's not an EU country then too bad, no EU Product Hunt for you.
By embedding-shape 2026-01-2319:211 reply I'm sorry, but what are you talking about? Yes, a core idea is freedom of movement, but you make no case for why that makes EU Hacker News infeasible? It has nothing to do with where people write software. I'm using US Hacker News, and I'm in Europe, is that wrong/bad, or what's your argument here?
By tialaramex 2026-01-2322:491 reply EU Hacker News isn't infeasible my argument is rather that it's largely pointless. The EU should avoid key US dependencies, but that means things like we shouldn't design a system that needs Microsoft's stupid "Co-pilot 365" or whatever they are now calling Word and Excel, rather than it's important never to visit a web site hosted in the US.
"The new government policy shouldn't require iPhones" is a long way from "Nobody can read The Onion", and even in its hardcore "Sign up for YCombinator" mode Hacker News really isn't anywhere close to the former.
Although because idiots I am no longer in the EU I'm in Europe too.
By embedding-shape 2026-01-2411:171 reply > EU Hacker News isn't infeasible my argument is rather that it's largely pointless
Ok, but what are your actual arguments against it? Again your comment contains things about the EU and US which I don't know why you keep bringing up.
Do you have any arguments against a European Hacker News that isn't related to the EU and US geopolitics or government policies?
By tialaramex 2026-01-2417:461 reply Just seems needless. Like "We should have Hacker News for musicians" or "We should have Hacker News for City Dwellers". I think there's more value from the broader audience than from specialising what is already a fairly niche site. This isn't Facebook or Youtube, it's both less technically sophisticated (no offence to Dan & co keeping it working) but also much smaller in scope.
I'm sure musicians and city dwellers could have some stories they're more interested in versus less interested in, but this gets into the newsgroup hierarchy problem where too much specialisation means there's nothing left to talk about. We presumably agree that a Hacker News for people named Brian who work at Meta is a bad idea?
By pezezin 2026-01-251:15 I used to think like you, but in the last few years I have become tired of American-dominated spaces that ignore other world views and push their narratives endlessly, so I am very much in favour of European-focused forums and social media.
> This started out as an ideal about Goods.
I am sorry but no. This is a common myth, but go way back to the original treaty of Rome and you’ll see much more than free movement for goods. It was just a convenient first step.
By tialaramex 2026-01-2417:471 reply I didn't know that's a myth, do you have anything I can look at to learn more, besides "try reading the entire Treaty of Rome" ?
Reading the preamble of the treaty is enough because it explains the mindset behind the European project. The Schuman declaration is also short and very clear on the subject. Even though it’s not a treaty or regulation, it’s a clear demonstration that the people at the time saw much further than just the economy. The core message is political integration to prevent Europe from tearing itself apart every 50 years.
By tialaramex 2026-01-2514:23 I don't think I see free movement of people in Schuman? It's very clear about wanting to move steel and coal but it mentions workers only to suggest that this ECSC should "improve living conditions" for workers. I could squint at this and consider that a steelworker in Duisburg might "improve their living conditions" by retiring to a nice slow-paced village in Southern Italy but just as easily it could mean the ECSC is about workers staying where they are but being able to afford nicer stuff.
However once I'd fought the EU's terrible web search I did sit and read a bunch of the actual Treaty of Rome, and yes that actually does very clearly specify Freedom of Movement for Workers and is broad enough in how it treats this freedom that it's not a surprise courts subsequently concluded that basically every EU citizen should be able to live anywhere in the EU.
By reconnecting 2026-01-2317:141 reply Same here.
Open-source security framework (1). Applied 16 August 2025. Company registered in Switzerland (EFTA). No reply.
However, European Alternatives is a personal (sole proprietorship) website and has nothing to do with Europe, despite the name and style, which are slightly misleading as they mimic official EU website aesthetics.
By reconnecting 2026-01-2317:36 Thanks so much!
I have been working on https://1launch.eu for the past two months. Very MVP stage. I don't plan to be in the same niche as european-alternatives, but it is very much inspired by this. It is largely meant to be a ProductHunt / AngelList for Europe with a couple of key features especially for the European market (like instant translation into all 24 languages of the EU to launch in the whole European market in one go). If you want to launch on the platform or want to be involved in a different way, send me an email on hackernews@1launch.eu
By R_Spaghetti 2026-01-2418:241 reply I checked the first 3 companies I saw with the label 'EU hosted'. bunq.com and lifebit.ai are hosted on AWS, and tomtom.com is hosted on Azure.
https://info.addr.tools/bunq.com https://info.addr.tools/lifebit.ai https://info.addr.tools/tomtom.com
By Notch123 2026-01-3013:23 Good that you checked that. I focused on getting substance on the platform for indexing purposes first. I plan to do a quality check ASAP and expect a lot of these mismatches to resolve once the feature for companies to claim their pages goes live.
By DiggyJohnson 2026-01-2321:441 reply Do you have a plan or idea of how to get the minimum critical mass of genuine users once the platform is built out?
By Notch123 2026-01-3013:23 Yes, do a lot of manual outreach :)
By vldszn 2026-01-2321:31 Wow, 1launch looks great! Will definitely launch there very soon.
By vldszn 2026-01-2321:52 Just submitted EasyInvoicePDF to launch on 1launch :)
By quicksilver03 2026-01-2317:481 reply I've seen the same thing, the site accepts submissions but there's no one to either approve or reject them.
Unfortunately they did really well at SEO at one time, and more active alternatives appear far below in the search results.
By quicksilver03 2026-01-2320:282 reply I've been able to submit new entries to
I've also found other problematic ones:
https://euro-stack.com/ (I couldn't understand how to submit a new entry)
https://www.goeuropean.org/ (all submissions fail with an AirTable error [sic] that the workspace is at the record limit)
By sam_lowry_ 2026-01-2322:15 Euro-Stack.eu is a scam that promotes European software using:
A wordpress.com based website hosted in California by the US company Auttomatic Fronted by Cloudflare, a US monopoly (this is probably part of wordpress.com paid subscription) Edits its letter to EU Commission asking to support European IT industry in Microsoft Word. Converts it to PDF with Adobe softwareBy vldszn 2026-01-2320:38 Interesting. Thanks for the info
By vldszn 2026-01-2323:39 xD
I think the biggest issue is that your product is not from a company generating money (and taxes). IMO as an european, I think we should aim for open source, not corporate software, but free and open source software is generating way less jobs and taxes money.
By badsectoracula 2026-01-2318:22 The site has a lot of open source projects though, in fact i found about copyparty[0] from it because it was listed as an alternative to file hosting services (though it was removed since then, probably because it isn't a service :-P but still there are various FLOSS projects).
By vldszn 2026-01-2318:10 Yes, make sense.
I plan to add a paid “pro” version with more features, but the current functionality will remain free.
Same here. I created and submitted a European open-source Snapchat alternative, but it's been in “Waiting for Review” status for quite some time now.
Webpage: https://twonly.eu/en
You probably need to include EN16931, XRechnung, Factur-X, ZUGFeRD, … and how they all called, the new standard for electronic invoices.
By mpaepper 2026-01-2321:47 Free generator for e-invoices here: https://www.e-rechnung-online-erstellen.de/kostenlos/e-rechn...
By vldszn 2026-01-2321:27 This is planned =)
Starting working asap on this because in Poland (where I live) it will be required from April 2026.
Issue to follow: https://github.com/VladSez/easy-invoice-pdf/issues/121
By albertgoeswoof 2026-01-2318:21 Same, can’t get https://mailpace.com listed, no idea why
By sam_lowry_ 2026-01-2322:091 reply Unless you do Peppol... it's not intresting at all.
By sam_lowry_ 2026-01-249:071 reply A hint: try cooperating with letspeppol, it is built by engineers for engineers.
By vldszn 2026-01-2410:19 Thanks for the suggestion. Will take a look
By schubidubiduba 2026-01-2317:531 reply > template=stripe
Maybe this was enough to not include it?
By vldszn 2026-01-2318:02 What is the problem with “/?template=stripe”…?
=)
By 202508042147 2026-01-2319:234 reply Doing my bit: migrating my small company's db this weekend from AWS RDS to Hetzner VPS + volumes. Fingers crossed!
Already done: replaced SendGrid with Sweego.
Later: move domains from US registrar to EU based.
The difficult bit is the Microsoft Office because we are also using Azure DevOps for code, tickets, wiki and ci/cd.
By esperent 2026-01-2415:35 Gradually moving over from Teams to Hetzner + Nextcloud over the past year. The chat app is the blocker (Nextcloud Talk is not quite there yet). But we've moved over files, docs, calendar, photos, etc.
By testing22321 2026-01-2415:26 Me too.
Just moved all my hosting and dbs from a US company to Hertzner after 15 years of good service. Moving domains now.
Unfortunately Hetzner volumes have pretty low iops for databases
By 202508042147 2026-01-2511:22 We have a small database with low access rates. We'll be fine, at least for a while.
By toomuchtodo 2026-01-2320:159 reply What EU based registrars would you recommend?
By mindhunter 2026-01-2320:56 By 202508042147 2026-01-2321:161 reply Hetzner might be a good choice to keep things together, as we're already using some services from them.
By celsoazevedo 2026-01-2322:52 I like Hetzner, but I'd avoid having everything under the same provider.
Sometimes hosting companies suspend accounts. If that happens, it's useful to have your domains and backups with different providers.
By s_dev 2026-01-2322:57 https://european-alternatives.eu/category/domain-name-regist...
It's all in there.
By ricardo81 2026-01-2322:52 I wouldn't hard recommend based on lack of solid experience of using them over time, but Gandi showed a lot of promise for me.
Context: I used to run a domain-related service that used registrar api's and gandi's seemed the most well thought out by a considerable way. The drawback was they're quite expensive for registrations/renewals unless you're doing it at volume.
I had reservations about them being a French company wrt support but their API was so good I never needed to contact them on anything.
Definitely worth a look.
For me personally, one that's well supported by DNS-01 providers for let's encrypt.
Unfortunately there's not that many and often the process is broken.
By 202508042147 2026-01-2320:53 I haven't looked into this yet, so I cannot recommend. I'll work my way through the list here: https://european-alternatives.eu/category/domain-name-regist...
By kergonath 2026-01-240:10 I’ve been using Gandi for quite a few years now without any trouble.
By layer8 2026-01-2322:20 SchlundTech
By throwaway5465 2026-01-2323:30 netim.com
