Criteria

Eligibility Criteria for Listings

To be eligible for listing on European Alternative, products and services must meet the following criteria:

1. Company Location

• The company must be legally registered and based in an EU, EEA, EFTA, or DCFTA member country.

2. Parent or Holding Company

• If the company has a parent or holding company, it must also be located in the EU, EEA, EFTA, or DCFTA member states.

3. Hosting Providers

• Hosting providers must be based in an EU, EEA, or EFTA country.

• Ineligible Providers: Hosting providers that lease infrastructure from companies based outside these regions (e.g., US-based services like AWS or Google Cloud).

• Eligible Providers: Hosting providers that own and operate their infrastructure within the EU, EEA, or EFTA.

Hosting Categories We List:

We feature a wide range of hosting services, including:

• Cloud Computing Platforms

• Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

• Managed Kubernetes Services

• Managed Docker

• Managed Databases

• Object Storage

• WordPress Hosting

Open Source Projects

European Alternative also includes self-hosted open-source projects. These projects do not have to meet the geographic location criteria but should be simple for users to host independently.

Example:

• Jitsi (for video conferencing) or Gitea (for Git repository management) are open-source projects that can be easily hosted by users on their own servers, with no geographic restrictions.

Special Labels

EU/EEA/EFTA Hosted Label

Services are eligible for the EU hosted label if:

• Core services are physically hosted on servers located within the EU, EEA, or EFTA regions.

• These services are operated by EU-based companies, including parent companies.

Applicable to non-hosting services like web analytics, email providers, or data management tools.

Examples:

• ✖ Invalid: Core services are hosted in a data center operated by a non-EU company, but the data is routed through third-party US servers for processing.

• ✖ Invalid: A service relies on US-based infrastructure for caching and security (e.g., using a US CDN for performance optimization).

• ✖ Invalid: The login page is hosted on a platform owned by a US-based company, even though the server is located in the EU.

• ✔ Valid: Core services are hosted on UpCloud servers located in Finland, operated by an EU-based company, ensuring full compliance with EU data residency and privacy regulations.

EEA Hosted and EFTA Hosted Labels

• The EEA hosted and EFTA hosted labels follow the same criteria as the EU hosted label.

Example:

• EFTA hosted: A service based in Switzerland (an EFTA member) with infrastructure located within EFTA countries, such as UpCloud's data centers in Zurich, qualifies for this label.

Additional Notes

• Case-by-Case Evaluation: Some international companies may have specialized infrastructure for EU customers that meets these criteria. These cases will be evaluated individually. However, core services must always comply with the geographic hosting requirements.

• If you spot a product or service that does not meet these criteria, please contact us.