Hetzner and the EU: Why We Chose European Infrastructure
SecureEU Team
Privacy & Security
When we built SecureEU, the very first infrastructure decision we made was: no US-based cloud providers. Not AWS, not Google Cloud, not Azure. We chose Hetzner — a German company with data centres exclusively in Europe. Here's the reasoning.
Who Is Hetzner?
Hetzner Online GmbH is one of Europe's largest data-centre operators, founded in 1997 and headquartered in Gunzenhausen, Germany. They own and operate their own hardware across data centres in Germany (Nuremberg, Falkenstein) and Finland (Helsinki). They are not a reseller or middle-man — they control the full stack from physical servers to network infrastructure.
Crucially, Hetzner is a purely European company. They are incorporated under German law, subject to EU regulations, and have zero legal presence in the United States.
Why Not AWS or Google Cloud?
Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are all US-incorporated corporations. Under US law — specifically the CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, 2018) — the US government can compel these companies to hand over data stored on their servers regardless of where those servers are physically located. A file stored on AWS eu-west-1 (Ireland) is still legally accessible to US authorities via a CLOUD Act order.
🇪🇺 Our Setup
- Object Storage: Hetzner Helsinki, Finland 🇫🇮
- Application server: Hetzner, EU
- Company jurisdiction: Denmark 🇩🇰
- US infrastructure: None. Zero. Absolutely nothing.
GDPR from Top to Bottom
Because every component — our code, our servers, our storage — sits within the EU, every byte of data is subject to GDPR and nothing else. There's no jurisdictional ambiguity, no conflicting legal obligations, and no "data processing addendum" papering over a fundamental conflict between US and EU law.
Double Protection
Even if someone gained access to Hetzner's physical drives, they would find nothing but AES-256-GCM encrypted blobs — useless without the decryption key that only the file sender possesses. European infrastructure is our first line of defence. End-to-end encryption is our second. Together, they make data exposure practically impossible.